“He was very authoritarian, verbally brutal”: Vanessa Paradis remembers her first and most difficult shoot, at 16

She is on the cover of the new edition of the magazine Marie Clairepublished this Friday, December 6, 2024.

During a long interview, Vanessa Paradis talks about her joyful nostalgia, her memories of being a “young mother”, her musical inspirations, and even her first experience as an actress, on the set of the film. White wedding by Jean-Claude Brisseau, in 1989, when she was only 16 years old. She then returns to the “very, very, very authoritarian” behavior of the director.

“Unpleasant”

Two years after the success of the song Taxi JoeVanessa Paradis makes her debut as an actress in Noce blanche, under the direction of Jean-Claude Brisseau. She plays a high school student who falls in love with her philosophy teacher. A difficult experience for the teenager, because of the behavior of the filmmaker.

“Indeed, I suffered there. Brisseau was very, very, very authoritarian, not very pleasant and verbally brutal. But as it was my baptism of cinema, I had no point of comparison, so I was still piqued by the desire to act and bitten by life on set,” she explains to us. However, she believes that this complicated experience was useful to her: “It was a very difficult first time, but which perhaps allowed me to be the actress that I am”.

With Lily-Rose Depp, they discuss “a lot” about the violence of this industry

Also an actress and soon to appear in Nosferatu by Robert Eggers, expected on December 25, 2024, Lily-Rose Depp, her daughter, knows that she can count on her mother's experience to protect herself from this type of behavior.

“I answer her questions when she asks meexplains Vanessa Paradis. (…) And we have lots of conversations about it. I also learn a lot from her perspective. Deep down, she is a very strong young woman to whom I don't need to give advice. Her job, her choices, she manages them so well.”

This is not the first time that Vanessa Paradis has spoken out about Jean-Claude Brisseau's behavior towards her. A few months after filming, in November 1989, she spoke in the columns of the magazine First. “Brisseau could do whatever he wants, I will never go back to him. He was hateful“, she said at the time, as relay AlloCiné.

Died on May 11, 2019 at the age of 74, Jean-Claude Brisseau was convicted in 2005 for sexual harassment against actress Noémie Kocher.