from ComingSoon.net (US) / by Edward Douglas

There are two reasons why La Vie en Rose, Olivier Dahan’s new biopic about the life of legendary French singer Edith Piaf, might be one of the best movies of the year so far. The first is how the filmmaker created a non-linear visual portrait of Piaf’s life through her songs, but more importantly, it’s the astonishing way that 32-year-old actress Marion Cotillard (pronounced “coat-tea-yar”) was able to capture the many phases of Piaf’s life and career from singing on the streets of Belleville in her 20s to her later years, as she lay dying of cancer and could no longer perform.

Recently, ComingSoon.net had a chance to talk to Olivier and Marion about the astonishing film and a performance that’s likely to be remembered come Oscar time.

To kick things off, Dahan explained why he wanted to make a movie about Piaf’s life, and he told us of the difficulties he had getting others to understand why it was important. “For a long time, I wanted to make a movie about an artist and it seemed to me that Edith Piaf was the perfect example of what an artist could or should be in the way of mixing life and art together all the time, to be totally committed to her art and to be very truthful. No lies. When she was on stage, even when she was sick and dying, she was there for the people. My producer had been working pretty hard to find the money to do this movie. It wasn’t so easy, because there were a lot of people in France telling him and me that making a movie about this old singer wouldn’t be of interest for young people. Most of them didn’t really want to finance the movie because they thought it was dusty and old-fashioned, it wasn’t really modern. I was sure I could make something modern with this character, but at the beginning, it wasn’t so easy.”

“I did no casting,” he said about his search for the perfect Edith Piaf. “Marion was my first idea from the very beginning. I really didn’t think about anyone else. I was sure she was the one, it’s very simple. [My producers] wanted me to meet other actresses just to be polite, but I was sure at this time that Marion would make the movie. From the very start of the writing process, I was just thinking about her. Marion is a good singer but it wasn’t important, because from the beginning, I wanted the real voice of Piaf in the movie.”

“I didn’t know anything about her life,” Cotillard told us when asked if she was intimidated about playing such a legendary personality. “When I started to discover her life, I felt something very close immediately, so I was not so intimidated by the fact that she was an icon. The thing that intimidated me was more to play a sick old lady that looks much older than she is in reality. That was a scary thing for me.”

Cotillard told us about the early influences of Piaf on her life before getting the role. “I have an ancient memory from when I was a little girl. I heard her voice, and I thought she had a very strong voice. When I started to work on this project and I discovered all these pictures, the footage and interviews, and the movies she did as an actress, my first impression was the strength and at the same time, the weak person she could be, the balance of these two opposite things was something to discover. Sometimes, I use music in order to help me to get through different kinds of emotions, and several times before this project, on other movies, I used Piaf songs, so I had an intimate relationship with those songs. I had that image of that little sparrow, as they called her, with that black dress and that strong and amazing voice. The thing is that in her time, she would share her personal life with the audience and the press each time she had an accident or a lover. The new generation, they just don’t know anything about her intimate life, but they know her songs, because she wrote the most beautiful love songs. When you have all those shows here like ‘American Idol,’ we have the same in France, and each year, they would sing Piaf. It’s just about her intimacy that the new generation doesn’t know.”

We wanted to learn a bit more about the non-linear nature of the film and how Dahan cut between Piaf’s early and later years quite fluidly, particularly whether he scripted the movie that way or came up with that structure after shooting the film. “I really didn’t change anything during the editing. It was already written like this,” he admitted. “Actually, it was like that from the first draft of writing. The first week, we just shot the very young Edith, and it was a good way to enter for me as a director into the movie, because I really like to work with children. I’m really comfortable with them on the set.”

That must have been difficult for his star who had to switch gears between playing a young Piaf that was closer to her own age and playing her when she was much older. “When I saw the schedule and I saw that the fourth day of shooting for me was the scene where she decides not to do the Olympia and then Mr. Dumont comes and sings ["No Regrets"] and she has that resurrection. I saw this and I was like ‘Wow, man, this is the big jump straightaway.’ I was a little bit scared of that but I realized that it was the better way not to be so scared by starting the young years. The fact that it was all mixed–I was young and then old and then I was my age–I think it was a good thing that they did it like this, because after four or five days of old period, it was so good to come back to the younger one. I found my marks in all the periods and then it was just about enjoying doing something I know I can do and I can have fun with. About the make-up, it was a good thing too, because when we’d take the make-up off, the latex, the glue and everything, the prosthetics, it was like 30 days with the make-up on which is quite a long period, and it’s better if it’s spread over four and a half months.”

The two of them also talked about working with France’s most famous living actor, Gerard Depardieu, who plays Louis Leplée, Piaf’s first manager (and the originator of her name) “He’s such a character,” Marion told us. “He’s an amazing actor that all people know, but on the set, he really creates an atmosphere. He’s a very simple guy to talk with, very open and funny. It was one week, but because we were shooting many emotional scenes, that week was a little piece of happiness and laughing. It was great to work with him. He is one of the most incredible actors in France.”

“Actually, he’s like Piaf, he’s the same kind of person,” Dahan added. “He’s always mixing life and work in a funny way. He has a lot of humor that I like, and it was a very nice experience to work with him. He doesn’t make you feel his experience. He has this great gift, like when you see Gerard talking with anybody on set, he doesn’t care if they’re on the crew or a child, he talks to everybody, he’s not superficial.”

We asked the actress and director what they felt Edith Piaf was searching for and received two very different answers. “I think she was searching for love forever,” Marion said, “and it’s very understandable, because she was abandoned when she was a baby. I guess that when you’re abandoned as a baby, you will search for love your entire life.”

“I think from the very beginning she wanted to be a star, because she didn’t want to stay and sing in the street. From the very beginning, she knew she had a voice, and she wanted to become someone, but not to change herself to become someone else, but just to become what she was. Leplée was the very first one to trust her, because just before that, she was just singing in the street and for the very first time, someone engaged her in a cabaret and she was really singing for an audience even if this audience wasn’t so big but they were there to listen to her.”

“Leplée, he was her savior really,” Marion agreed. “He was the man who got her from the streets, and for her, it was a disaster when he died, because he was like her father, he believed in her, and at that time, because she was accused of being involved with his murder, it was a very big loss for her.”

We asked Marion if she was prepared for the kind of attention she’s likely to receive for her performance as Piaf. “Because I’m not a total newcomer in France, I have that quality to be able to take a step back, so I didn’t have to have a special preparation for this. The people I’m working with, I trust them. I’ve worked with them for a long time and they’re beautiful support for me. It’s something to get that attention, but it’s also about the movie, and I’m very happy this movie has the chance to be seen all around the world.”

And how will she follow up this landmark role and performance? “Nothing that I can talk about right now, but it’s going to be a stage musical, sort of rock opera.”

Olivier concluded by telling us what he hopes audiences will come away with after seeing the movie. “Even in France, people don’t know so much about her life. A lot of French people know her songs because they still play them on the radio, but not everyone knows about the story of her life. Here, it’s worse, because for sure, she’s not American, so it’s different. I didn’t have any expectations from the audience in France, so I can’t have any expectations here neither. I would just like that the people who go to the theatre to see the movie like it.”

La Vie en Rose opens on Friday, June 8, in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

from Time Out Chicago (US) / by Cliff Doerksen

Actress Marion Cotillard takes on the role of a lifetime in ‘La Vie en Rose’.

To say that legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf (1915–1963) is an icon of French culture is a bit like saying that Elvis Presley has a healthy following in the U.S. This week a new biopic about the singer premieres in Chicago. Titled after her best-known song, ‘La Vie En Rose’ it stars actress Marion Cotillard as the diminutive songbird. We spoke to the 32-year-old Cotillard by telephone in late May.

Were you at all intimidated by the idea of playing such a revered figure?

Yes and no. To play a national treasure is not without risk, but I was not scared once I read the script, which gives such a full-blooded picture of her life that I knew the film would show the same Piaf that people keep in their hearts.

Were you already familiar with the facts of her turbulent life when you read for the part?

I knew almost nothing about her life. I knew her songs and the sound of that distinctive voice, and of course I had a mental picture of her in that little black dress.

Would that be true of most French people your age and younger? Is Piaf slowly being forgotten?

Not her sound or style. We have a TV program that’s the French equivalent of American Idol, and each year you see contestants who are perhaps 18 or 20 who try to sing like Piaf. And the film itself has really created a lot of new interest in her music and life among young people here.

Most Americans know the name and the voice but not a lot more than that. It was only while preparing for this interview that we learned that Piaf was accused of being an accessory to the murder of her first manager, though ultimately was acquitted.

That’s only scratching the surface of what a turbulent life she lived. She was raised in a brothel. She had many famous lovers, including Maurice Chevalier and Yves Montand. She fought against the Nazis and saved lives working as part of the Resistance. Jean Cocteau wrote a play for her. She lived through addiction and heartbreak and tremendous sorrow.

Sounds like an exhausting role, and that’s not even counting all the makeup and the facial prosthetics that you wore to become Piaf. Does altering your face like that help or hinder you as an actress?

I don’t know how other actors feel, but for me it helped immensely. You have this heavy and warm thing on your face and it somehow takes you out of your accustomed feeling and appearance and really lets you inhabit the character you now resemble. It’s well worth all the time you spend holding still in the makeup chair.

How do you expect the film will do in America?

I think the life of Édith Piaf has a passion that translates across the boundaries of language and culture, and if it brings lots of Americans to discover her music, that would be beautiful.

from Time Out New York (US) / by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Marion Cotillard finds herself by losing herself—in Edith Piaf.

Biopic acting is its very own beast, as thespians maneuver to avoid both reverent imitation and showy histrionics. The challenge is even greater when the subject is known as a singularly magnetic performer. Such is the burden that fell upon Marion Cotillard, 31, when director Olivier Dahan cast her as Edith Piaf in his film La Vie en Rose. As if this weren’t daunting enough, Piaf and France itself remain so symbiotically linked that portraying the singer is like being asked to play Judy Garland and De Gaulle rolled into one.

The doe-eyed Cotillard was able to eerily immerse herself into her role, no doubt helped by the fact that despite having starred in three hit (in France) Taxi movies, she had a low celeb profile—even if alert cinephiles had spotted her in Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s perverse Innocence, or as an angel of death in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement (both 2004). TONY got on the horn with the soft-spoken actor, calling from her home base of Paris.

Did your artistic family have anything to do with you going into acting?

My parents are theater actors and directors. I didn’t have a preference for theater or film, but I got the opportunity to make movies rather quickly and I found something there that suited me—a way to express what I needed to express, a very intimate dialogue with the camera.

You’ve always alternated between big commercial movies like Taxi or Ridley Scott’s A Good Year, and smaller, artier ones like Innocence or Abel Ferrara’s Mary. Is this a conscious decision?

It isn’t so much a choice as a way to conceive of this job. I was really lucky, for instance, to meet Abel Ferrara, who’s passionate and possessed by what he does. And in addition to being a lot of fun, that experience allowed me to work with Forest Whitaker, whom I’ve admired for a long time.

You’ve often given life to opaque characters, like Mademoiselle Eva in Innocence—there’s not that much to them on the page. How do you fill in the blanks?

There’s a lot of wealth in mystery. That’s why I’m attracted to these parts: They leave room for imagination.

It’s the exact opposite with Piaf: Her life is well known, so you had to deal with information overload.

Right, but you can have a lot of information about someone and have that person remain mysterious; her dimension is so great that you can’t know or understand everything. As a matter of fact, I knew almost nothing about Piaf’s life when I got the role. But when I started to discover her reach, I felt closer to her, and her iconic status became less scary. I was actually more afraid at the prospect of playing a 47-year-old woman—especially considering that at that stage of her life she looked 20 years older than she actually was—than an icon. I was 30 at the time, and it wasn’t easy to make it all work.

Was the film shot chronologically?

We shot in order of what made sense economically. So we started the heavy-makeup sessions on the fourth day. But that’s when I realized that dealing with all her ages in the first weeks was best. There were almost three different characters: a girl of 19, a young woman of 30 and a woman in her forties; as weeks went by, I had figured out all my technical and emotional marks within each era of her life.

Your lip-synching of Piaf’s songs looks remarkably natural.

I started by taking singing lessons to understand Piaf’s technique. Lip-synching realistically to someone else’s singing means learning how that person “breathed” the songs. The entire body also plays a part, and I needed to understand how to position myself.

Then I figured out that the best way for me to actually lip-synch was to sing at the same time as the track, knowing I had to hear it more than my own voice—those days were pretty painful for the crew because I asked them to turn the volume way up! I knew that if I didn’t emit any sound, it wouldn’t work.

What has the movie changed for you as an actor?

There’s a new sense of closeness—the feedback I get is very emotional. During her lifetime, Piaf triggered very strong emotions. That people are able to feel them by watching the movie is a testament to Olivier’s achievement.

La Vie en Rose opens Fri 8

from The Village Voice (US) / by Leslie Camhi

Already generating Oscar buzz, Marion Cotillard chats about channeling her inner chanteuse

I’d last seen Marion Cotillard in La Vie En Rose, director Olivier Dahan’s film about the life of the great French singer Edith Piaf. Born in destitution on the streets of Paris, Piaf reached the summits of artistic achievement and international celebrity before dying of cancer at age 47, her body wracked by decades of emotional turmoil, overwork, and addiction. So meeting the radiant young actress in a New York hotel suite recently was something of a shock. On screen, Cotillard embraces this role-of-a-lifetime body and soul; in person, she’s calm, cool, and utterly self-possessed.

Leslie Camhi: What does the voice of Edith Piaf mean to you? Marion Cotillard: Her whole life is in her voice, both her enormous strength and her great emotional fragility. And then it’s a unique voice, full of character, authentic and earthy, a voice of the people and of the Parisian street.

Is that a milieu with which you are personally familiar? Well, I didn’t have a miserable childhood, as she did. But I grew up in a poor and working-class suburb of Paris, in the projects. When I was little, it was great, everybody’s door was open all the time. There were Chileans, North Africans—you got to know a lot of different cultures and people who were managing to survive on very little money.

How did you become an actor? I come from a family of theater actors and directors. So I took classes with my parents, and then I met some people who helped me along. When I wanted a coach for the role of Piaf, I called one of my old teachers, Pascal Luneau. Our goal was never to mimic Piaf, but to understand her heart and soul.

As Piaf, your speaking voice is almost as extraordinary as her real-life singing voice. I spent an enormous amount of time listening to recordings of her voice, and to her songs, of course. During the film’s preparation, I was afraid that if I tried to speak like her, I’d end up with nothing more than an imitation. Two weeks before the shoot, I was still wondering if things would work out. But I could sense things falling into place inside of me.

It must be difficult to play the end of someone’s life and career, when you’re close to the beginning of your own. Yes. And then there’s the death itself—I really couldn’t identify with that.

How long was the makeup? Three to five hours for the later scenes, and though uncomfortable, it also helped me a lot. The lenses covering my eyes, with red veins to make them look older, the prostheses—it was all very heavy and hot on my face. And there was a heaviness in Piaf, too, toward the end. I remember, when I found out that she had died at 47, I couldn’t make the connection between that age and the pictures of her. And then, with all her excesses, it made sense.

Is there a moral in the film? It’s the story of a woman who took things all the way, who put all of her energy, all of the time into love and the sharing of emotions. So it’s beautiful, and at the same time that childlike innocence she wanted to keep her whole life also pushed her to extremes. I don’t see a lesson in it, exactly; I see the logic of human disaster. [She was] abandoned by [her] mother as a baby, so she had this great fear of abandonment, which fueled her tyrannous hold on people. And at the same time, the way she used this disaster in her art was magnificent. What remains of it are the most beautiful love songs ever performed.

from Variety (US) / by Liz Smith

HAD LUNCH with Marion Cotillard who plays France’s great singer Edith Piaf in the hot film “La Vie en Rose.” This young Frenchwoman has made 10 films, speaks perfect English, resembles a combo of Natalie Portman and Winona Ryder, and gives an astounding performance as “The Little Sparrow.” Marion portrays Piaf from her 20s to her tragic death at 47. Piaf came to haunt Marion’s dreams. She found it impossible to get out of being Piaf. Once she smoked a cigarette and later dreamed the singer sat on her bed saying, “You just can’t smoke a cigarette if you want to play me.” She told me that when the French were asked to name their 100 most important persons, they named only two women — Madame Curie and Edith Piaf. … Cotillard made me laugh describing working on another film for director Tim Burton — “a genius” in her eyes — down in Montgomery, Ala. We were discussing interpreters and she said, “We really needed some there on ‘Big Fish’ to explain to New Yorkers what the Alabamians were saying.”

from New York Daily News (US) / by Marshall Fine

Marion Cotillard embodies Edith Piaf in ‘La Vie en Rose’

When Marion Cotillard strides into the room – tall, svelte, commanding – it seems impossible that this could be the same actress who is generating Oscar buzz for her performance as singer Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose,” opening Friday.

In the film, Cotillard seems to shrink into Piaf’s birdlike (the name “Piaf,” in fact, translates loosely as “sparrow”) 4-foot-8 frame. But in person, Cotillard appears to be at least 5-feet-8, someone who could just as easily be stepping onto a fashion runway to model designer creations. The transformation was a mental trick, Cotillard says mysteriously.

“Part of it was camera techniques, but part of it was that I really tried to believe I was tiny,” says the 31-year-old French actress. “By believing it so strongly, I thought it could work, because then your whole body is involved in that desire to be small. And the first time I saw the footage and I saw how tiny I looked, I was so happy. I told myself, ‘It worked.’”

“La Vie en Rose” is an impressionistic biography of Piaf, who, more than four decades after her death at age 47, remains the French equivalent of Judy Garland or perhaps Billie Holiday: a singer who channeled all the pain and tragedy of her life into passionate performances that, for a moment, made the rest of the world melt away. Except, if anything, Piaf led an even more melodramatic life.

Raised by her paternal grandmother, who ran a Normandy brothel, Piaf (born Edith Gassion) spent her teen years struggling as a Paris street singer – until she was discovered by nightclub owner Louis Leplee, who christened her “La M%F4me Piaf” (Kid Sparrow). Nightclub gigs led to recording contracts and films and she became France’s most popular entertainer, as well as a hero of the French resistance during World War II. But a car accident in 1951 left her badly injured – which led to a longtime morphine addiction and continuing problems with alcoholism that dogged her career until her death from cancer in 1963. Her funeral in Paris famously stopped traffic.

As he wrote the script for the film of her life, director Olivier Dahan had only Cotillard in mind for the role, though he didn’t know her. But her work – in French films such as “A Very Long Engagement” – had caught his attention, in part, he says, because of Cotillard’s sad eyes.

“Piaf, when she was 20, had the same look and shape of the eyes,” Dahan says. “But the main attraction was that Marion is a tragedian, which is something quite rare. I knew I needed someone like that to bring the character alive.”

“That rings a bell,” Cotillard says, with a smile. “I do love to play tragedy.”

But first, Dahan had to battle to cast Cotillard. Though she had been acting for more than 10 years, she wasn’t the box-office magnet the film’s producers were hoping for: “I wasn’t attracting money for the film and it took a long time to finally get the role,” she says.

That may soon change. Cotillard already has the attention of Hollywood, having appeared in films by directors as diverse as Ridley Scott (“A Good Year”), Tim Burton (“Big Fish”) and Abel Ferrara (“Mary”). The kind of buzz that a performance like the one she gives in “La Vie en Rose” – in which she plays Piaf from her teenage years to her death – quickly could make her a sought-after talent. The fact that she’s a stunner who speaks charmingly accented English doesn’t hurt, either.

Dahan was adamant about using Piaf’s actual singing voice in the film. So, like Jamie Foxx in “Ray,” Cotillard mimes behind recorded performances, something that may be even more difficult than trying to duplicate Piaf’s distinctive voice.

“It’s the energy and the breathing – maybe you can’t see it but you can feel it,” Cotillard says. “Her voice gathered so many things: the street, the lights, the poor, the wealthy, the sadness, the drama. The strength she had, mixed with the fragile emotional person she was, creates something authentically unique.”

Marion Cotillard flew from Cannes to New York to attend the ‘proper’ New York premiere of ‘La Vie en Rose‘ on May 31. Remember, there was one back in February this year during the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. This time the event was organized by the film’s US distributor Picturehouse and Chanel. The day before she also attended the premiere of another Picturehouse film ‘Gracie’. Check out the pictures in the gallery (many thanks go out to Mariana)!

041 ‘La Môme’ Premiere by Chanel & Picturehouse
010 ‘Gracie’ New York Premiere

from Savoir Magazine (US) / by Mikael Jehanno

Few movies this year have moved French people as much as La Vie en Rose, a film directed by Olivier Dahan, which sheds a new light on the tragic and tumultuous life of Edith Piaf, the unforgettable voice of France after World War II and throughout the ‘50s. Thanks to Marion Cotillard’s sublime performance, La Vie en Rose has already won the hearts of over five million French movie-goers. From Belleville to New York, from adolescence to glory, Olivier Dahan chose an intimate angle to depict the immortal artist’s exceptional destiny, highlighting her triumphs, her wounds, her loves, and – more than anything – the explosive mixture of strength and fragility that allowed Edith Piaf to express pure, undistilled emotion from the depths of her soul. The movie is coming to American theaters on June 8; it will be a chance for the American public to discover a wonderful actress, Marion Cotillard, and to rediscover the one they had nicknamed “the Little Sparrow” when she sang at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1956 and 1957. We had the pleasure to meet Olivier Dahan and Marion Cotillard last April, while they were enjoying a short stay in Los Angeles.

The daughter of a stage actress and a director, Marion Cotillard decided to become a performer very early in her life. After debuting on the stage, she appeared in My Sex Life… Or How I Got Into an Argument by Arnaud Desplechin and La Belle Verte by Coline Serreau as early as 1996. The mainstream public discovered her in Taxi (1998), directed by Gérard Pirès and produced by Luc Besson. In 2005, she won the Cesar for best supporting actress for her role in A Very Long Engagement, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Her performance as Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan’s La Vie en Rose is a veritable tour-de-force.

Mikael Jehanno: La Vie en Rose has received unanimous praise by the critics and five million French people have already seen it on the silver screen. Did you expect such a success?

Marion Cotillard: You can never expect it. It’s clearly a good surprise.

MJ: What made you decide to play Edith Piaf?

MC: Everything…. After I read the screenplay and saw how much there would be to express, to act, I was seduced mainly by the character as a whole, and I knew I wanted to play her.

MJ: Was it intimidating to get under the skin and into the soul of such an emblematic figure?

MC: I like strong characters. But I never imagined that I would ever have access to a character as strong as that of Edith Piaf. Regarding her status as an icon, when I started working on the project I discovered a woman rather than a legend, and I immediately felt close to her. So I wasn’t particularly nervous.

MJ: How did you gather the substance to play Edith Piaf?

MC: First there’s a rather technical component involving reading, watching videos and listening to recordings. I didn’t know anything about her life, so I had to discover everything. Afterward, beyond all the stuff you’ve read and heard, you have to understand the person. Finally, you abandon yourself into her. Something happens.

MJ: What was your relationship with Edith Piaf before Olivier Dahan offered you the part?

MC: Obviously, Edith Piaf is very important in France. Her voice is unique. She mixes emotion and extraordinary passion. Also, she was my grandmother’s idol.

MJ: What was the impact of the part on your own emotional universe? Is it painful to get out of such a fascinating character?

MC: It’s true that I felt lonely all of a sudden when the filming ended. She and I lived together for two months. It was a cohabitation of two strong personalities, one of which – Edith Piaf’s, of course – was extremely so. When it all stopped it put me a little off-balance to find myself alone, to get back to my own life, my own feelings…. There was an acclimation period. I’m lucky that I really love my life and I don’t want to live someone else’s. But still, it took a few weeks.

MJ: Which are your favorite Edith Piaf songs?

MC: There’s one…it’s not that I didn’t like it before the filming of La Vie en Rose, but I thought it was okay, no more. It’s called “Padame.” It’s one of Edith Piaf’s greatest songs, and I rediscovered it and immediately adored it; I thought it was a little strange that I hadn’t liked it to that point. I remember, as a little girl, I didn’t like the “Padame, Padame, Padame….” It’s now one of my favorite songs, simply because I sat and listened to it with all my heart.

MJ: Just like Edith Piaf, here you are in the United States for a few days. La Vie en Rose dwells quite a bit on the time she spent living in the U.S. In the movie, after some time in New York, she says, “I couldn’t care less about America.”

MC: She said that because she was annoyed and because she was very proud…[laughs]. The fact that she arrived and wasn’t immediately successful hurt her, so she got her revenge by implying that Americans couldn’t understand her. But when you look closely at the story, you see that she spend a quarter of her life here. Then she met Marcel Cerdan in New York City, [and] she lived in California. She came to the United States often, so in fact she loved it here, this country, these people. As far as I’m concerned, coming here is always a pleasure, even and especially when it’s to promote a film. A lot of my heroes and idols do live around here.

MC: I was just going to ask you if there are any American filmmakers who inspire you more than others.

MC: Yes, there are many, but I don’t want to give their names. I can say Tim Burton, because I’ve already worked with him and I would love to work on another of his movies. It’s true that when I was little, movies like E.T. were my favorite thing. E.T. is from here – well, he’s from far, far away…[laughs]. The first films I saw as a child and then as a teenager were American movies. American cinema therefore played a great part in my decision to choose this profession.

MJ: You are also a stage actress. Did playing the part of a singer make you want to get back on the stage?

MC: Yes. I don’t have much experience with stage acting and I’m impatient to return to it.

MJ: Could you tell us about the famous final sequence in La Vie en Rose?

MC: It was a special moment, since we were actually filming at the Olympia. After three months of filming in Prague, we had just returned to Paris, where we were only going to stay for two weeks, and which was her city. She always needed to go back there. In the audience were people who knew Piaf, [and] her best friend was there. It was a special moment in Edith Piaf’s life, her return to the stage after a year long absence. No one expected to see her again, but as she said herself, she couldn’t live without singing. It was one of my best memories of the filming.