We could say that Zabou Breitman is the opposite of a
nepo baby
,
these sons and daughters of personalities who ride on the success of their parents to establish their own.
In the show “A Sunday in the Country”, the 64-year-old actress spoke to Frédéric Lopez about the obstacle that her parents' success had represented in their way of looking at her career, but especially in her her way of enjoying her small and big victories.
To the point of forgetting her father with whom she had written her first film,
Remembering Beautiful Things
, in her acceptance speech at the César Awards.
To discover
Business with Attitude 2024 Prize: vote for your favorite candidate!
Download the Le Figaro Cuisine app for tasty and authentic recipes
Also read: Julie Gayet, Zabou Breitman, Nicolas Maury... They talk about their teenage perfumes
“I turned the thing around and I take responsibility for it”
On February 22, 2003, Zabou Breitman, in a tailcoat and white T-shirt, took to the César stage to receive the prize for best first work of fiction.
Last year,
Remembering Beautiful Things
, a film about memory loss that she wrote with her father, Jean-Claude Deret, was released in theaters.
A distributor had predicted a total failure for a film that she had described as “monstrous”.
Quite the opposite is happening.
Proudly, the new director begins her acceptance speech, which she concludes with “I hope I’m not forgetting anyone.”
A failed act, since she forgets perhaps the most important person in the film: her father.
After having wondered why for a long time, to the point of actually suffering from it, Zabou Breitman today confides his analysis to Frédéric Lopez: “I turned the thing around, and I accept it”.
Faced with a father who constantly tells him "ah, that's my daughter", a mother who repeats to him that she is lucky, it is the opportunity, unconsciously, to seize his chance: "this one- There, she’s for me!”
“I never shared my successes with them”
Born in Paris, to an actress mother and a screenwriter father, her father was so successful that “he didn't go out into the street without being attacked, it was crazy.”
His mother comes from an extremely poor family, while his father comes from a very bourgeois family.
“My mother always told me I was lucky, and it always irritated me.
I understood that what was happening to me was not my doing,” she says.
One day, his parents are no longer successful.
When hers arrives, she can't help but be afraid of hurting her parents and can't celebrate it.
His first magazine cover, a children's title, gave him an unpleasant feeling.
“Perhaps because when my mother saw that, it necessarily made her sad,” she analyzes.
“In fact, I was so embarrassed that I never shared my successes with them.
I know they were for me but deep down there was the feeling of their failure which was still very strong.”