Originally published on April 6, 2007
from Daily Mail (UK) / by Baz Bamigboye
Marion Cotillard is a risk-seeker, but not in the conventional sense. She doesn’t do drugs, and she doesn’t parachute out of planes.
“I find my pleasure by putting myself in danger – a danger that makes me feel alive – a danger that comes from acting,” she told me when we met at London’s Claridge’s Hotel to discuss her extraordinary portrayal of French singer Edith Piaf in the movie La Vie En Rose, which goes on release here on June 22 following its opening of the recent Rendez-vous With French Cinema Festival in London.
Ms Cotillard portrays the Little Sparrow from her late teens through to her death at 47, when her tiny frame was unable to cope with the vast amounts of alcohol and narcotics she had ingested.
At her death, it was said Piaf resembled a 70-year-old. “That’s what I mean!’ Cotillard, who is 31, suddenly exclaimed. ‘I like it when it’s risky,” she added.
Yet Piaf belied her circumstances. “She struggled and she achieved because she worked hard at her singing voice but I don’t like to use the phrase that she was a good example – because she wasn’t!
“I liked the fact that she pushed herself further and further.”
Some aspects of director Olivier Dahan’s amazing film are uneven, but Cotillard’s performance lifts the picture to a level of greatness. The actress puts all her life force into the portrait of a small woman with a big talent, and even bigger emotions.
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