He plays Louis XVI in Jeanne du Barry, the new film by his mother Maïwenn, presented at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival. Diego Le Fur, born from the union of the director with the businessman and producer Jean-Yves Le Fur, is not yet 20 years old and will climb, this Tuesday, May 16, the famous steps of the Riviera. Tall, tanned complexion, hair in battle and piercing eyes, the young man had until then other ambitions than those of breaking through on the big screen.
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Passion for tennis
Far from film sets, the son of Maïwenn and Jean-Yves Le Fur spent his childhood between school and tennis courts, his father's first love with whom he shares this passion. Indeed, Jean-Yves Le Fur, the sulphurous self-made man who made a career in fashion and television production, exchanged bullets in Nice with Yannick Noah, when he was a teenager. A love that has never left him, since he will set up in 1998 a magazine called TéléSport, stopped after five issues.
And a passion, therefore, transmitted to his only son who will make, in 2021 and at only 17 years old, the front page of the Official Riviera, under the lens of photographer Pierre-Ange Carlotti. Racket in hand and white towel around his neck, we already discover in these photographs a Diego Le Fur displaying the quiet strength of the greatest, like his icon, the legendary Swedish champion Björn Borg. "Tennis has given me back my self-confidence," explained in the columns of the magazine the one who still has the ambition to be among the 100 best players in the world.
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In addition, he had also whispered that the practice of tennis had been "a form of rebirth" for him, without however giving more details. Perhaps, the young Diego was struggling to find his place, child of a figure of fashion and a personality of cinema. An ancestry that may also have helped him build his character of the young Louis XVI. "The character traits that I had of Louis XVI, that is to say someone in his bubble, who hates Versailles, who hates everything that is luxury and everything, it is a little bit the character of my son. He doesn't care about anything material. It is only tennis that interests him, sport ...", explained his mother Maïwenn, on May 10 on the set of "Quotidien", then in full promotion of Jeanne du Barry. Adding, however, that he had agreed to play the role of Louis XVI without much compromise.
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Fusional link
The filmmaker has a deep, "fusional" bond with her only son, "beautiful as a star". Diego Le Fur was born from the passion of the latter with Jean-Yves Le Fur, whom she met after her heartbreaking love story with Luc Besson, father of her daughter, Shanna (30 years old). Married very young to the director of The Big Blue, who left her in 1996 for the model Milla Jovovich, known during the filming of The Fifth Element, Maïwenn was then in the grip of a serious depression. His career is at a standstill, his love life too.
Until 2002, when she met a certain Jean-Yves, a handsome man with a meteoric rise in the world of fashion and media. Producer for TF1 and Canal +, the businessman produces - in particular - documentary series on supermodels of his generation, such as Carla Bruni, Naomi Campbell or Karen Mulder. He rubs shoulders with both All-Hollywood and All-Paris. We also owe him, in parallel, editorial projects such as the magazine Numéro, which he founded in 1998 with the publisher Élisabeth Djian or DS Magazine, a year earlier, which earned its stripes by dealing with social issues, but especially the redesign of the mythical men's magazine Lui.
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Narcissistic flaw
Attending high society, Jean-Yves Le Fur is also known for his relationship with Princess Stéphanie of Monaco, with whom he will remain for several years as well as the supermodel Karen Mulder. But his love story with Maïwenn will perhaps be the most dazzling and passionate. If we do not know in what context the two lovers met, they will marry in December 2002, less than seven months after their first date, and have their first child the following year. Before divorcing a year later, in 2004.
Often described as flayed, Maïwenn is no stranger to very intense relationships. If the mother of Diego Le Fur has never given details about her tumultuous passion with the father of her son, it is whispered that his film My King, released in 2015, would be largely inspired. The filmmaker films the love story between a woman (Emmanuelle Bercot) and a narcissistic pervert (Vincent Cassel). A story where love plunges its heroine into addiction on the verge of madness.
The trailer of Jeanne du Barry, with Maïwenn and Johnny Depp
In any case, water has flowed under the bridge since her divorce from Jean-Yves Le Fur in 2004, and Maïwenn now seems to have returned. She explained in 2017, in the columns of Marie Claire magazine, the relationship she has with her two children, Shanna Besson and Diego Le Fur: "When you have children, independence is over! One becomes a slave to love until the end of our days." Would the 47-year-old filmmaker have found in her son Diego, her new king?
