Pio Marmaï: “I like to hear that I create surprise”

How to explain the longevity of an actor?

If luck is necessarily a part of the equation, work and risk-taking also provide the beginning of an answer.

Pio Marmaï is the perfect example.

In fourteen years of career and thirty-four film roles, the actor has established himself in the French cinematographic landscape with increasingly complex characters.

At 38, the one who began by playing the seducers now ventures into major films that require a significant investment.

On the bill of

by Christian Duguay, where he plays a sulky champion, we soon find him as Porthos in the films

, by Martin Bourboulon,

In video, the trailer for

Storm

with Pio Marmaï and Mélanie Laurent

Miss Figaro.

– What memories do you have of the film

I had not yet had the opportunity to play in a family film of such magnitude.

Embodying a sulky driver required enormous physical preparation from me, and working with twenty-five racehorses (and not movie horses) requires intensive training, but also an essential letting go.

This in-between suits me well.

After

and the

, I had the impression of shooting all the horse movies of my career in two years!

How do you assess your career today?

Nothing is installed in an acting career, and it happens that one is mistaken, but I have the impression that my choices are refined.

My gaze on a writing or a filmmaker is now sharper, and this necessarily excludes projects that are a little feverish or less exciting.

In video, the trailer for The

Three Musketeers

with Pio Marmaï

Actors are often asked to commit to a cause.

Where is your activism?

I stopped eating meat.

The people I met on the set of

the film by Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano on climate activists, as well as François Civil, with whom I hang out a lot and who is a vegetarian, opened up my eyes.

For a long time, I thought that ecological issues didn't really concern me, but I realized the importance of getting involved, even on my small scale.

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What do you like people to say about you?

I like to hear that I create surprise.

And when a curious and imaginative filmmaker like Quentin Dupieux offers me characters very far removed from my personality or from what I've done so far, that rekindles the sacred fire I have for this job.

What are you currently shooting with the French director?

I just started filming

, in which I play the Spanish painter.

I was really terrified at the idea of ​​starting this film, because I had to find my own Salvador Dalí, while remaining in a certain mimicry of voice, accent and even physique.

A hell of a challenge!