“My son is the most precious thing I have in the world”

Karim Leklou has khaki green eyes that light up as soon as he talks about a scene from a film he loved. “These scenes that capsize the heart,” he said on this Parisian morning in October, with his face drowned in innocence which recalls Totò, the adorable kid from Cinema Paradiso. Sitting on the sofa of an 18th century apartment^e district, the actor reveals himself through his expressions. As he speaks, we see a small wrinkle in the middle of his forehead and the hollows of his dark circles, the legacy of a life lived to the fullest.

Then, after a moment of silence, comes this eloquent sentence: “The acting profession is greedy,” he tells us. “It’s true, there is something ogreesque about Karim,” assures actress Laetitia Dosch. A self-taught need to nourish himself with history, culture and scenes from real life to inject them into his characters. Through cinema, to which he devotes his life, Karim tries with strength, heart and finesse to make the world a better place.” The actress gave him the answer in Jim's Novelby the Larrieu brothers (released last August).

Deep humanity

From his first appearances, in A Prophet (2009), by Jacques Audiard, or among emerging filmmakers of the 2010s, such as Rebecca Zlotowski or Élie Wajeman, Karim Leklou sparked a feeling of renewal. “Karim has the strength of Jean Gabin. He can exude violence or great gentleness, but there is always a deep humanity deep in his eyes. It creates immediate empathy with the viewer,” testifies Clément Cogitore, who directed it in Goutte d’or (2020). In the main role, Karim Leklou plays Ramsès, a somewhat crooked medium from the Goutte-d'Or district. A character full of contrasts between bluntness and gentleness, imposture and intelligence.

“We have seen it a lot in naturalistic cinema, but it can be deployed in very different registers,” adds the director. In nearly fifteen years of career, Karim Leklou has become one of the most beloved actors in France. Suburban dealer castrated by his mother in The world is yoursby Romain Gavras, cop in North Bac, by Cédric Jimenez, hairy amnesiac in He's my man, of Guillaume Bureau, or inmate released for forty-eight hours in Time outby Ève Duchemin, her characters often possess the class of discreet heroes.

The art of nuance

Today, Karim Leklou, 42, is starring in the third season ofHippocrates (Canal+), the nervous series by Thomas Lilti. Alongside Louise Bourgoin, the actor is Arben Bascha, a Franco-Albanian doctor, both hero and imposter. “Thomas Lilti questions us about the notion of public service, about the frustration of professionals who try to save lives without having the means.” In this slump, the medical army ends up self-organizing to treat patients within frameworks that go beyond legality. “My character is full of nuances, between his passion for medicine and his flaws,” he adds.

In the cinema, the actor rubs shoulders with Adèle Exarchopoulos, François Civil and Élodie Bouchez in L'Amour ouf, by Gilles Lellouche. At the heart of this fresco of love, immersed in the 1980s, he plays a father who sees his son drifting away, and himself loses the straight path. “He is a humiliated man, unemployed, trying to survive,” says Karim Leklou. The actor likes the way the film highlights destinies that defy social determinism: “All the philosophies of the world evoke a concept capable of moving even the most hardened among us: freedom, therefore the capacity to change . For me, that’s the message of this film.”
He cites Steinbeck, Melville, Marx and Kafka in reasoning that moves at great speed. Karim grew up in a two-room apartment in an HLM in Saint-Cyr-l'École, in Yvelines. His parents divorced when he was 7 years old.

His father, Mustapha, an immigrant storekeeper of Algerian origin, sleeps in the living room to give him the bedroom. “He was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary career. Proletarian certainly. But thirsty for culture,” says Karim modestly. At 4 a.m. on his way to work, his father would read ten pages of a book every day.

At home, he listened to Jimi Hendrix and shared his passion for cinema with his only son: “Do The Right Thing, Scarface, Dances with Wolves…we watched so much together.” From his Breton mother, a receptionist and passionate about Gainsbourg and Jean Ferrat, Karim says he inherited his sense of respect and discretion. Today, the father of a young child, he will only share one sentence on this subject: “My son, he is the most precious thing I have in the world.”

Transfiguration ability

As a kid, Karim didn't imagine a specific future. After a BTS sales force, he took on odd jobs, selling telephone lines at France Télécom where, out of boredom, he produced replicas of Scarface to customers. Encouraged by a show that aired on Paris Première in the 2000s, he decided to enroll at Cours Florent. “At first, I didn’t feel legitimate. Then, something was unlocked: I understood that I should not be seductive, but visceral.” For one of his first castings – The Prophet, by Audiard -, Karim rehearsed for a whole day at McDonald's, with Taha Lemaïzi, a friend he met at Cours Florent and with whom he still studies his roles: “We rehearsed five lines a hundred times, in all the tones. It was crazy.”

“I don't look like John Wayne. My face is rather ordinary,” he laughs. We then review the media descriptions of his physique: a “cocker spaniel”, “tender lamb” or “beaten dog” look, “sometimes worried, sometimes worrying.” “Full Villeret airs”, or even “a Ventura-style build.” Karim Leklou listens with a smile, without hiding the pride of having been able to overcome obstacles. Through his game, he managed to turn his weaknesses into a strength. “His capacity for metamorphosis is impressive,” testifies Cédric Jimenez, who directed him in North Bac.

For this feature film, Karim lost 20 kilos. “But for Time outby Ève Duchemin, where I play a man addicted to drugs, I took 30 of them!”, he says cheerfully. For For Francewhere he played a baker, he learned to make baguettes, and to play a heart surgeon in Repairing the Living, he attended open-heart operations at Salpêtrière for two weeks. Latest role: that of an officer of Polish origin in De Gaulle, by Antonin Baudry, for which he has just finished filming and for which he immersed himself in international relations during the Second World War.

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Related actor

Karim Leklou does not follow any acting method. Throughout his interpretations, we find the humility and modesty of great actors. Praised for his curiosity by all directors, he is one of the rare actors to remember all the names of the cinematographers, directors of photography, costume designers, make-up artists and prop masters with whom he worked. And knows the qualities of each one. Citing, for example, “the way in which Laurent Tangy, cinematographer on North Baccaptures the nervousness of the movement”, “the precision demonstrated by Sylvain Verdet, director of photography on Goutte d’orin his way of using the lights of the city to sculpt images.”

He also praises Thomas Grimm-Landsberg, sound engineer on He's my man, as well as “the work of the costume designers”, Charlotte Richard (Vincent must die), Judith de Luze (Jim's Novel) and Joana Georges Rossi (For France). We will listen to him go through the names of around thirty people during more than an hour of casual conversation. “We must never forget that despite its stars, cinema is above all a collective profession,” he repeats at the door before disappearing.

Hippocratesseason 3, by Thomas Lilti, from November 11 on Canal+.