Football legend and world champion with the French team, he is now a hit on the boards.
Retraining among high-level athletes is always a delicate moment, particularly among footballers. Many remember former striker Stéphane Guivarc’h, who hit the headlines a few years ago by transforming himself into a swimming pool salesman. Other world champions from 1998 occupy various positions today: coaches (and even selectors), commentators or sports columnists, polemicists in talk shows, patrons for schools or companies… All with fortunes various.
But one of the faces of this legendary team achieved another feat. In addition to appearing regularly on television as a consultant, the latter has become an actor and performs very regularly in the theater. He also made a real hit with the play “Hernie Fiscale”, in which he won the main role, and which returns to the Comédie Saint-Martin, in Paris, after a first notable appearance at the start of the year.
You will have recognized him: it is Frank Leboeuf. The former Chelsea defender embodies “a somewhat crafty trader who treats himself to a quiet weekend break. He turns off his cell phone, orders a dream meal, a companion, he has only one goal, to enjoy this moment of rest, so rare in his life. Obviously nothing goes as planned.
It was in 2004, after his sporting career, that Frank Leboeuf began this shift: he went to Los Angeles to take courses at the Lee Strasberg Institute in order to become an actor. He would have liked to have pursued this career earlier, but his father, a heating plumber, ran a football school, “so I went there,” he explained to Liberation. “As a kid, I loved watching At the theater tonight with family. I remember all these great actresses and comedians on the small screen. I have always been passionate about the stage,” he also told the Actu.fr website.
The decision is strong and the reception has been mixed. “Many of them have criticized me: ‘What is he doing there?’, ‘He has nothing to do in a theater!’, as if I were taking someone’s place. people in the business who were my friends when I was a footballer no longer talk to me because they are afraid that I will ask them to rotate me. ‘have played more than 1200 times on stage even though I have played 700 professional football matches and the public continues to come to see me…”
It is true that it took Frank Leboeuf a few years to break through, with several plays and a few appearances in films (including The ball Is Round by Mirwan Suwarso, where he plays his own character). But for the play “Fiscal Hernia”, directed by Alil Vardar, everything has the aspect of a consecration. Frank Leboeuf is at the top of the bill for this comedy which toured throughout France, before returning to Paris for several dozen dates. If you are curious, know that it is playing at the Comédie Saint-Martin until February 2, 2025.
