Isabelle Adjani looks back on a trauma suffered while filming

The death of Niels Arestrup was communicated by his wife Isabelle Le Nouvel, to AFP, this Sunday, December 1. At his home in Ville-d'Avray (Hauts-de-Seine), the 75-year-old actor passed away “at the end of a courageous fight against illness”. Without delay, a shower of tributes and prayers spread on social networks and in the newspapers. André Dussolier, Rachida Dati, Patrick Bruel, Laura Smet… Many celebrities have shared their dismay at the loss of this great actor.

Isabelle Adjani admitted this undeniable observation about the talent of Niels Arestrup bluntly during an interview with “Le Parisien”, this Sunday, December 1. What the actress has not forgotten, however, is the brutal behavior of the actor, when the two artists gave each other the line for the play “Mademoiselle Julie”, in 1983. “Personally, I did not unfortunately nothing positive to say about the man. My memory of the theater partner remains a striking trauma. But Niels Arestrup was a great actor, I share this opinion, that of many artists and his audience.”

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Seven years ago, Isabelle Adjani spoke for the first time about this episode, to “Madame Figaro”. She recounted this violence she suffered which still haunts her today, more than 40 years later. During this interview, she did not give the name of the actor in question: “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. »

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Myriam Boyer, Miou-Miou, Maria Schneider…

In a long interview given to the newspaper “Libération” in 2007, the actor did not deny these serious confessions: “It's been twenty-five years since Mademoiselle Julie, with Isabelle Adjani. And since then, I've tried everything: explaining myself, keeping quiet, but nothing can be done, it's getting under my skin. »

Like Isabelle Adjani, other actresses were confronted with the brutality of Niels Arestrup during filming and rehearsals. Myriam Boyer (mother of Clovis Cornillac), for example, recounted being strangled by the actor during the production of “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” » in 1996. After the incident, she was fired before receiving 800,000 francs in damages.

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Other violence – not voluntary this time – on the set of “Dérobade” in 1978. Niels Arestrup did a little more than give the answer to Miou-Miou. The latter, wishing to invest herself in her role, damaged her ear. The actor recounted this episode to “Libération”: “But her eardrum was completely burst! However, I had told her, as well as Daniel Duval who directed the film, that it had to be simulated, but she insisted on it, she wanted it to look real… The same day, I broke Maria Schneider's coccyx …”