What if Elsa Zylberstein was called Elsa Steiner? The actress, who will soon be playing a Jean-Pierre Jeunet anticipation film on Netflix, tells the microphone of Europe 1 about her decisive meeting with Maurice Pialat. The filmmaker offered her one of her first important roles, at 18, for the film Van Gogh, and also prevented her from changing her name.
"I thought it was going to be me"
Elsa Zylberstein entered the Cours Florent at the age of 17 and quickly took part in the Van Gogh casting . At 18, she auditioned for the leading role, which she did not pick up. "I am told: 'you are going to be a silhouette'. So I am a silhouette, that means extras with maybe one or two sentences," said the actress in "L'Équipée sauvage", on Thursday, on Europe 1. A small role that suits him very well. "I was so happy to go on a set of Pialat."
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Luck will smile on him from the second day of filming. "There was a girl playing the prostitute, with Dutronc, and they sent her away." Elsa Zylberstein is then informed that Maurice Pialat is going to look for a replacement among the actresses present. "At that time, there are four of us, five girls on the grass waiting and I thought it was going to be me. He gave us a page of text and he looked me in the eye." The actress has barely said a sentence when the director is convinced. "He said to me: 'it's good, you have the role, get dressed'."
Steiner, "it looks like a sofa brand"
It is the beginning of a great adventure that she remembers at the microphone of Europe 1. "I shot for a month, the film went to Cannes, I was nominated for the Césars and it left . " Maurice Pialat also gives him career advice, especially on his name. Under pressure from her mother, who found Zylberstein too long, she plans to change him and thinks of Steiner. "It makes Truffaut very heroic," justifies today the one who, already at the time, admired the work of the director of the 400 shots .
The actress therefore submits the idea to Maurice Pialat. The answer is clear: "It looks like a brand of sofa." The director warns her: "You do what you want, at least on the poster, I will put Zylberstein", she says. "So I kept my name because of, or thanks to Maurice Pialat."