With Jean Dujardin, Guillaume Canet, Antoine Duléry or Albert Dupontel, Gilles Lellouche is one of those actors to whom Jean-Paul Belmondo, who died on Monday, made people want to make films and who, having become actors, regularly frequented their idol.
“I am extremely sad.
Jean-Paul Belmondo is our national hero.
I grew up with him, I saw all his films, I was madly in love with him.
I was very lucky to have him as a
godfather
in the profession.
Jean-Paul was of nameless benevolence.
He came to all the premieres of my films and to all my shoots to have lunch with the crew.
He had come on the set of
A close range,
on that of
La French,
on that of the
Grand bain…
When Jean-Paul Belmondo arrived on a shoot, we saw the whole team be 12 years old again: because there has the actors, the cinema people… And Jean-Paul Belmondo.
"
"This permanent optimism"
“During the filming of
Bac Nord,
in the summer of 2019, Jean-Paul was on vacation in Marseille,” continues Gilles Lellouche.
We were in the same hotel, in rooms next to each other.
We had dinner together in the evening and he would ask me to tell him about the day of filming.
He enjoyed hearing about the cinema.
He was a great cinephile, who was in life, in sharing, in generosity.
He encouraged us to live this profession with pleasure, not with pain.
He had this permanent optimism.
"
Read alsoHow Jean-Paul Belmondo became the boss of French cinema
“Jean-Paul, it was my childhood hero who had become close. Seeing Bébel in the cinema and seeing Jean-Paul in life, for me, was to live harder, more intensely, better. Seeing him was a bath of youth, sums up the director of Le
Grand Bain.
He was the embodiment of the pleasure of living. We could see its strength even in recent months. Jean-Paul was always smiling, always positive. I never heard him speak ill of anyone. The first time I met him was fifteen years ago. Jean-Paul Belmondo went to the theater, saw all the films and when he liked an actor, he invited him to lunch. He wanted to meet me and we had lunch together in an Italian restaurant on avenue Rapp
(Editor's note: Paris VIIe)
, with his brother Alain. I was very, very intimidated… and after half an hour, I felt like I was with someone I had known all my life. We couldn't help but love him. Jean-Paul Belmondo is a whole cinema, it's a whole world. I have a lot of trouble and a lot of trouble getting to the idea that he is no longer there. "