How to summarize sixty years of career in one page? “Magnificent trajectory, from Mme Foldingue to Grandma Suze: a complete panorama! » suggests the main interested party, Claire Nadeau, currently starring in “The Family”, a deliciously biting and moving play by Samuel Benchetrit, where she plays the mother of two enemy brothers played by François-Xavier Demaison and Patrick Timsit.
“What I liked about this woman is that she is good,” explains the actress. She is deeply kind, so much so that she never suspected that her two sons hated each other. She doesn’t have an ounce of malice or manipulative tendencies. And it feels good to play that! » It is certain that it changes her from the more or less crazy bourgeois roles that she has played, a register consumed to the point of indigestion when she becomes, through advertising spots, the muse of Petitjean quenelles.
A Molière “on the go”
But above all, as she herself admits, she remains the Ms. Foldingue of the “Collaro Show” for the boomers, the Grandma Suze of the “Tuche” for the youngest. And she doesn’t mind being limited to these two comic milestones? She who went through the Conservatory, the National Popular Theater (TNP) and worked with directors like Ladislas Chollat, Claude Sautet and Alain Resnais… “But no, it’s normal,” she replies, laughing. We have to talk about what speaks to people. Now, it’s true that I still had four Molière nominations! And I ended up getting one. Out and about! » It was in 2010, for “La serva amorosa”, by Carlo Goldoni.
Theater at the antipodes of the one that revealed it, even transcended it in the early 1970s. “While I was at the National Theater in Strasbourg, Coline Serreau called me: “You don’t want to come and replace me at the Parisian Vrai Chic , I’m with very funny people.” I accept and life changes. » And how! She feels so comfortable in this café-theater created by Coluche and Philippe Bruneau that she falls in love with the second with whom she has a child, Zoé, today an actress, like mother, who is not a little proud of her daughter: “She stars in “It’s not easy to be happy when everything goes wrong”, which won the Molière for best comedy. »
I really liked the period of May 68. We were fighting against all the shit we are experiencing now
Claire Nadeau
Claire Nadeau inherited from her parents, he, a famous publisher and writer, she, a French teacher with the soul of a revolutionary passionaria. Indeed, before playing prim rombières, the actress participated in the riots of May 68 and occupied the Odéon theater. “I really liked this period,” she admits. We were fighting against all the shit we’re going through now. The fact is that we failed, but the cause was just. »
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Returning from the barricades, it has survived the decades without incident. “Do you realize that I have never been a victim of sexual harassment? Good for me, but it’s almost annoying! » She is like that, Claire Nadeau. Discreet and determined, she gives you personal reflections with a consummate art of self-deprecation. And because she doesn’t think she’s anyone else, she likes to be left alone when she’s not on stage or on a film set: “I hate being recognized in the street. There’s my job on one side, and my life on the other. » From her almost embarrassed look when she says that, we deduce that it is not a question of coquetry but of modesty. The prerogative of the biggest.
“The family”, until January 5, at the Édouard-VII theater (Paris 9th).
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