Olivier Rabourdin is an actor. His face encapsulates the myriad paths of French cinema. He represents both the most niche arthouse cinema and today’s mainstream cinema, characterised by television series. This actor has both a man next door side to him and an unsettling strangeness, thanks to his deep blue eyes, somewhat unexpected or out of place in this face marked with lines that have been lightly and perfectly etched into it over the passage of time. It is in his dulcet tones that he tells us more about himself and his work.
JOHN JEFFERSON SELVE: You mentioned that you’ve just got back from a long trip. Where were you?
OLIVIER RABOURDIN: I’ve just got back from Guyana. I arrived there at the end of July for a series directed by Kim Chapiron. I play one of the main parts. It’s about illegal gold mining, Guyana and the Guyanese, all these mixed peoples you find there. Gold is a metaphysical subject.
JJS: Are people on a quest for gold? OR: Yes, all these people who are chasing after gold don’t really need it, deep down. Gold represents something else for them. My character is chasing after eternal youth, the dawn of life that he’ll never find. JJS: Did you travel around?
OR: Yes, it takes place in Cayenne and in the jungle. There are Creole, African, Brazilian and Nègre Marron (those who escaped from slavery) actors. These people reinstated villages in the forests, next to the American Indians. It’s a very rich and complex country, full of different people, and it’s also a somewhat abandoned French colony.
JJS: That kind of an immersive experience is pretty rare, no?
OR: Yes, it’s goes beyond simple travelling. I left for five months without going home. I had never experienced that before—and in such an extraordinary country as well. I didn’t expect to meet so many people and be so moved by them; most of them have fled from something or they are following a dream, but they all have powerful stories.
JJS: Is the way of life there very different?
OR: It is in the forest, so you watch where you step, but it’s not hostile. There is a different approach. There the forest belongs to the state but people make it their own: foraging, hunting, fishing—and they live on benefits. It’s a country we never talk about. It’s true that there is poverty but there are also advantages to having been abandoned by the French Republic. The state has withdrawn from everything that isn’t to do with the space centre in Kourou.
JJS: Can you tell us about your career path?
OR: I was born in Paris, I studied science and literature and I didn’t know what to do… And then I attended drama lessons when I was about 20. I’m from a middle class background. Ever since I was a child I loved the cinema—I often went with my grandmother. We’d see the big up-and-coming filmmakers: Arthur Penn, Coppola, Scorsese— I saw it all. Theatre was another world. I discovered that actors could be people like us, eating in restaurants, driving a car; I discovered that it was a profession. It wasn’t only the stars on the posters. So I went to Nanterre and I worked under the auspices of Patrice Chéreau. Then I had 15 years of really struggling, even if I had two or three prestigious things, like Hamlet with Patrice Chéreau. The `90s were very difficult. I was a chauffer, removal man and lots of other little odd jobs. I was certain that I was going to fail in this milieu. And in around 1999-2000, I started to come back, to make a living.
JJS: How old were you?
OR: 40. I was on the brink of a break up, it was hard—I was almost at the brink of destitution. And then in around 2004 I started to film. People were interested in me. Since then, each year has been better than the last. But at that time I had Arnaud Desplechin’s film, Kings and Queen, and a very important scene in a Thomas Vincent film, and that launched me. From that moment, I started to work for quite prestigious television and on arthouse films.
JJS: Can you work in any genre?
OR: Yes, because I also then found myself in Taken with Liam Neeson and the film became number one in the US box office! Having done that, I can work in any cinematic register, which is an incredible opportunity. Many actors—even established actors—don’t have that opportunity to have such varied roles. I’m the happiest man in the world for that.
JJS: But even before then, you had acted in a lot of films.
OR: Yes, I had lots of small parts, two or three days on set maximum, but I was fortunate to have interesting scenes through these small parts.
JJS: Do you have memories of films that you are particularly fond of?
OR: No, I wouldn’t put it like that. I love filming— I’m happy on set. So yes, there were films that changed my career, films that had more impact, but I have nothing but excellent memories of all the filming I’ve been involved with. I’ve met only great people. But what’s certain is that directors like Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Marchal and Xavier Beauvois allowed people to discover me in very good films.
JJS: And you started out with the great director, Patrice Chéreau?
OR: He’s my father. He taught me everything, I loved him, I hated him, I admired him, I feared him for years. And then we lost touch. He got in touch with me just before he died. We were supposed to do Shakespeare’s As You Like it together, the subject of which is reconciliation. He died shortly after this proposition, but I had the chance to tell him that he was my theatre father and that I loved him. That’s a huge opportunity. There was nothing but tenderness left between us.
JJS: In general, how would you explain your success?
OR: I’ve been very lucky. In the first part of my career, it was never me that was chosen and I didn’t understand why. Now it’s the opposite and I still don’t understand why! I’ve met so many talents in my life and it’s not talent that leads to success. There are two factors: the first is persistence— I was on the edge but I said to myself, even if it kills me I will do this job—and the other is luck! Today I’m in actors’ heaven. I don’t need anything else. The fact that success came to me late means that I completely appreciate what I’m living now.
JJS: Have you ever wanted to do something else in cinema—write or direct, for example?
OR: For a very long time, no—I was so happy with what was happening—and now I daydream maybe about directing, but no pressure… We’ll see.
JJS: Do you have the feeling that your childhood was the foundation for your relationship with cinema?
OR: I have a very vague memory. I must have been three or four years old. I was with my mother, maybe a neighbour, in the 18th arrondissement in Paris. We had seen a film called Lobo le Loup. I don’t remember the film but I just remember one scene: animals running past, to music, and I was very moved by this image. It was a really strong emotion, filled—strangely, given my age—with nostalgia. I can’t describe this feeling, but I was deeply moved. When we left the cinema, I started crying but I didn’t know why. That was my first big emotion in cinema. An image, animals running, music, and me in tears a quarter of an hour after the end of the film.
JJS: And literature?
OR: I can only give you a summary. We are always in the latest book that we are reading. But let’s say that in theatre, it centres on Sophocles, Shakespeare, Beckett, Chekhov, Ibsen—those are my big emotions. As for novels, La Comédie humaine by Balzac, L’Éducation sentimentale by Flaubert, which is a terrifying portrait of a generation, but also Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu and Céline’s Le voyage au bout de la nuit and Mort à crédit.
JJS: What about contemporary literature?
OR: I would say The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. It’s a great book that mocks religion but also celebrates the magic of the world.
JJS: What can we wish you for the future?
OR: That everything continues like this!
Originally published in Dapper Dan magazine 13, 2016. Interview by John Jefferson Selve.