Isabelle Adjani's reaction to the death of Niels Arestrup echoes other accusations

CULTURE – Since the announcement of the death of Niels Arestrup, this Sunday, December 1, tributes have multiplied to honor the memory of the actor A prophet and of Black Baron. But there are not only laudatory publications, so Isabelle Adjani was not particularly effusive in praise.

Questioned by our colleagues from Parisian on the actor who died on December 1, the actress sent her condolences to his loved ones and recognized the talent of Niels Arestrup “ a great actor “, but without forgetting the traumatic experience she had with him. She confides in particular, “ Personally, I unfortunately have nothing positive to say about the man. My memory of the theater partner remains a striking trauma. »

The event to which Isabelle Adjani refers took place in 1983 during the performance of the play Mademoiselle Julie at the Edward VII Theater. Niels Arestrup violently slapped the actress who then left the stage and the room. In 2001 on the set of the show FREE ENTRANCENiels Arestrup returned to this slap which, according to him, never existed. “ I would like to point out, once again, that I have never hit a woman in my life. I swear I didn't slap [Isabelle] Adjani.

In 2017 in interview with Madame FigaroIsabelle Adjani spoke about this incident without naming Niels Arestrup. “I experienced that in the theater, an actor with real physical violence. He even broke the arm of one actress later and was taken to court by yet another. Escaping him became so obsessive for me that I became ill. I had to stop the play. Everyone came at me like it was my fault. It marks… I never spoke about it explicitly, because I was ashamed.”

A “characteristic” actor

Over the years, Isabelle Adjani is not the only one to have spoken out to denounce physically violent behavior on her part. In 1996, Myriam Boyer claimed that the latter had practically strangled her on stage while they were responding to each other in the play Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Following these accusations, Myriam Boyer was fired from the play produced by Niels Arestrup. The latter ultimately had to pay him 800,000 francs in damages, as recalled The New Republic.

Moreover, Niels Arestrup himself had admitted some of his outbursts of violence. In 2007, during an interview with our colleagues from Liberationhe explained that he had “punctured Miou-Miou’s eardrum with a slap” but also “broken Maria Schneider’s tailbone” the same day, on the set of the film The Evasion in 1979. Behaviors sometimes highlighted over the decades by other actors, such as Clovis Cornillac who declared on the microphone of Europe 1 “ I hate this man… There are people who behave badly and in general, those who behave badly, I don't like them ».

Jean-Michel Ribes, director and friend of Niels Arestrup assured during an interview with our colleagues from franceinfo on December 1 that the actor “ temperamental but very nice » had regretted his slip-ups: “ But it's true that when all of a sudden he was pushed somewhere other than what he thought he should be doing, when he was a little overdirected, he reacted. Now, it's very sad what he did in the theater. He blamed himself a lot. He regretted it a lot. »

Niels Arestrup died at the age of 75 following a long illness. He had won the César three times for “ best supporting actor » pour My heart stopped beating in 2006A prophet in 2010 et Quai d'Orsay in 2014, as well as the Molière du comedian in 2020 for Rouge.

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