The actor, currently starring in the film A fanfare, recounts the day he received the call from the general administrator of the Comédie-Française telling him that he was admitted as a resident of the prestigious institution.
“I remember this phone call: ‘Hello, it’s Muriel Mayettefrom the Comédie-Française. I can talk to you for two minutes.’ It feels like life is turning upside down. I, who come from Poitiers, who dreamed of doing theater at 12 or 13 years old, at the Saint-Stanislas college, I could not imagine that a decade later, I would have a phone call from the administrator of the Comédie-Française”, remembers Benjamin Lavernhe with emotion.
“It’s a memorable memory, because I told myself that it’s possible. We have the right to dream. It doesn’t just happen to other people. It doesn’t necessarily need to be boosted. This is what I try to tell young people: everything is possible! And that we must dream and consider aiming high“, he says.
“Just because we mess up once or twice doesn’t mean it’s dead. I, the national conservatory, got it after three times. The first two times, I didn’t even get the first round,” confides Benjamin Lavernhe.
Each performance must be performed as if it were the first or last time performed and it must be sacred
Benjamin Lavernhe
Several times nominated for a Césarthe actor also remembers precisely the day he played for the first time at the Comédie-Française. “It was at the Vieux Colombier theater in The royal square by Cornelius. There were big names on stage like Eric Génovèse or Denis Podalydès. It pulls you up. We say to ourselves that we are playing in the house of Molière, the oldest troupe in the world, 1680…. It’s a great thrill, a very strong emotion.”
According to him, belonging to The Comédie-Française is a responsibility: “When I play Scapin’s deceptionsI know that there are people who go to the theater for the first time in their lives, grandmothers, grandfathers who take their grandchildren and tell them: ‘Look, this is the theater !’ It compels me and it moves me too. And then, there are undoubtedly people for whom it is the last time at the theater, who will perhaps die two or three days later. Each performance must be performed as if it were the first or last time performed and it must be sacred“, concludes Benjamin Lavernhe.
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