Is it the slightly outdated charm of her lace dress, the hushed comfort of the chic hotel where we find her, or the spontaneity that makes her hands fly and her cheekbones blush?
Elsa Zylberstein, this Friday morning in July, makes us think of a heroine from a 19th century novel: beautiful, determined, daring and endearing, a conqueror who owes her victories only to herself.
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In two and a half hours of lively interview, where she invites pell-mell the poet Paul Éluard, the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, the actor Hugh Grant (with a line from the romantic comedy
Love at first sight in Notting Hill
), she reinforces , if necessary, the essential place it has taken in French cinema.
Without thunderclap or crash, no: little by little, with bursts of appetite, curiosity and talent.
But it's a much more contemporary heroine, recently pantheonized (in 2018), that she wants to talk to us about.
Read alsoIn video, the fights of Simone Veil in the trailer for
Simone, the journey of the century
In video, “Simone, The journey of the century”, the trailer
On October 12, the theatrical release of
Simone, le voyage du siècle
, a biopic by Olivier Dahan, which retraces the entire career of Simone Veil.
Elsa Zylberstein is at the origin, for a long time admiring in front of “the courage, the force, the will, the resilience” of the political woman.
They met several times, they sympathized.
Elsa had told him about a “film project”.
After the death of her model, in 2017, she launched herself, bringing together producers and writer-director around her idea.
It is she who interprets Simone Veil from her 38 years to her 87 years, during her various mandates as Minister of Health (Chirac government and Barre governments) and that of President of the European Parliament.
I'm a bit Jewish, like Simone Veil
Elsa Zylberstein
She embodies it in her fights for the rights of women, of the sick, for Europe – and in her famous crusade, in 1974, for the legalization of abortion.
“I would never have believed, sighs the actress, that this film would be released at the time of such a regression on abortion in the United States.
Prohibiting abortion is criminal.
Like what struggles are never won.
Hence the importance of telling them, that the memory is there.
In the film, actress Rebecca Marder plays young Simone Veil, arrested at 16 by the Gestapo, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, months of ordeal from which her mother, father and brother will not return.
Fighting women
Elsa Zylberstein takes over, the years when Simone Veil works for the recognition of the Holocaust.
"I'm Jewish, a bit like her," said the actress.
Meaning both from secular, non-practicing families, but it's the story that makes you Jewish.
My father was a child hidden by the Righteous during the war.
His maternal grandparents were shot, what is called the Holocaust by bullets.
His paternal grandparents died in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Treblinka camp.
So, yes, I was raised in this awareness, I celebrate Yom Kippur, it is very important to me.
But even if I played Hannah Arendt in the theater, embodied the mother of Joseph Joffo in
A bag of marbles
or the wife of Léon Blum, that does not govern my choices.
It's more something that other people project onto me.
I could play a nun tomorrow.
What touches me in a role is not belonging, it's the character, what animates it.
The more it goes, the more I want films about women in combat.
Full screen
Chanel coat, Ole Lynggaard Copenhagen rings, Christian Louboutin pumps.
Esther Haase
Elsa Zylberstein was 22 when Maurice Pialat noticed her on the set of
Van Gogh
.
She was cast as a silhouette, he decides to entrust her with the role of Cathy, the painter's prostitute friend.
Nominated for the César Award for Best Female Hope, she is launched into a career whose pace will never falter – 72 films in thirty years – and whose eclecticism shows the extent of her abilities: great romantic frescoes (Farinelli, Lautrec, Modigliani ) to French comedies (from Claude Lelouch to Franck Dubosc), via more intimate productions (four films by Raoul Ruiz and a César for best actress in a supporting role for
I've loved you so long
, by Philippe Claudel).
For each shoot, she prepares herself as if her life depended on it, learning to play the violin, to milk sheep or to tie vines.
She kept a curiosity that others tend to lose in this profession
Noelle Deschamps
The film
Simone
is undoubtedly the one that surpasses all the others in terms of preparation: an entire year working on her voice (with the help of a specialized centre), her gait, her body (8 kilos gained), reading, to listen to the speeches, to meet the relatives of the woman she embodies.
“Elsa works non-stop, observes her friend, the writer Noëlle Deschamps.
It even goes beyond roles.
It constantly feeds on readings, encounters.
She looks for ideas, sets up projects.
She kept a curiosity that others tend to lose in this profession.
She is the opposite of jaded.
“Holidays are only considered if they are brief, his desires for cinema seem inexhaustible.
“Too spontaneous”
Full screen
Silk blend coat, Dries Van Noten, Christian Louboutin sandals.
Esther Haase
"It's probably playing tricks on me," laughs Elsa Zylberstein when asked about this fiery temperament.
I surely missed things by being too spontaneous or not very French in my behavior.
In France, you don't have to show that you want to, you have to act like “I don't care”.
Me, I am the opposite.
Sometimes I approach people, and then I say to myself: “Oh crap, I shouldn't have, I showed desire, so there may not be any desire in return…” But it's too complicated in fact, too bad.
I have so many desires, I feel like I'm still at the start."
Difficult to link this painting to the one she makes of her, a child “shy, wise, blushing, sitting in class in the first row”.
"I didn't trust myself.
I
Her mother, who works at Dior Parfums, enrolls her in classical dance, where she proves to be extremely gifted.
At the age of 18, her father, a physicist and senior researcher at the CNRS, asked her the magical question, which she still feels indebted to: "If everything were possible, what would you like to do as a job?"
She whispers "actress", enrolls in Cours Florent, where she enters "like at Harvard, working five scenes a week, being on the set all the time".
There was "no question of hanging out," she said.
I received an old-fashioned, very square education, my father was brilliant but authoritarian.
When I love someone, it's with a hot iron
In love, on the other hand, she says she is more reserved than in her professional life, far from the image of “great lover” that certain media conquests would suggest.
“People have this image because I had stories with famous people, like Antoine de Caunes and Nicolas Bedos.
Me, on the contrary, the more it goes, the more I find that it is very rare to love.
The little crush, that, okay, but the real romantic encounter, it is extremely rare.
Afterwards, when I love someone, it's with a hot iron.
For life, practically.
I take a very long time to dislike.
»
Full screen
Silk satin dress, Versace.
Ole Lynggaard Copenhagen earring.
Esther Haase
We notice that she always has a benevolent word for these two famous exes, “brilliant men, out of the ordinary”.
She cuts us off: “Of course!
I don't even understand people who disown a relationship.
I could never.
That would be trampling on me myself.”
Her friend Noëlle Deschamps confirms: “Elsa is extremely faithful, in all areas.
For example, she is still very close to her college friends.
At the moment, the actress is editing a short documentary that she shot in Auschwitz with Ginette Kolinka.
It was not planned, she just had to go to the camp with Simone Veil's former deportation companion.
When the survivor started talking, Elsa "discreetly" took out her cell phone, couldn't stop filming.
"Ginette, she spends her time saying, transmitting, we can only want to relay her words."
At the same time, the actress will work with the Austrian director Jessica Hausner, with the Belgian Olivier Van Hoofstadt and in the next film by her friend Karine Silla.
Not to mention the various projects she is developing as a co-producer.
In particular, a feature film inspired by the comic character of Mytho, which she created on Instagram during the confinements, pellets to scream with laughter which range from the fake Cannes Festival to the pseudo-trip in space, a vase on the head.
Or, in another register, a film inspired by the life of Élise Boghossian, an acupuncturist who treats the pain of the wounded in war zones.
"Another woman who fights," smiles Elsa Zylberstein.
“Simone, the journey of the century”, by Olivier Dahan, with Elsa Zylberstein, Rebecca Marder, Olivier Gourmet… Released on October 12