When Niels Arestrup recounts his (brief) meeting with Marlon Brando

INTERVIEW

On the occasion of the release of the film

 (release scheduled for June 2), in which he plays the role of a lawyer alongside Patrick Bruel, Niels Arestrup was the guest of the Europe 1 program

. The three-time Caesarized actor recounted his meeting with actor Marlon Brando. A meeting more than furtive since it lasted only a few seconds: "I had the honor and the chance to meet his gaze for four seconds, no more". But despite the brevity of the scene, Niels Arestrup still remembers it very well, almost 50 years later. "I ran into him and saw what presence was like," he insists.

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"I knew he was in Paris"

But this meeting between the American actor and the young Niels Arestrup is not really due to chance.

"I was looking to see him, I knew he was there, in Paris," said the one who won an award for

in 2013. Marlon Brando was then in France for the filming of the

, which will be released in 1972.

And he spared no effort: "I went to the Boulogne-Billancourt studio. I walked past the guard pretending to be an American who spoke French very poorly. I was shown a production office. of the

. There I met a woman, behind her typewriter. I gibbered in impossible English that I was a friend of Marlon Brando and that I just wanted to say hello. I saw the look of this woman who said to herself 'this guy is completely crazy, but you never know, maybe it's true'. She told me that, that day, he was in rue Vavin, to shoot the last shots of the film and that it finished at 6 pm, ”explains Niels Arestrup.

"He must have been afraid that I was waiting for him"

Once the information had been found, he launched himself and headed for the famous rue Vavin. “At 6 pm the black curtains opened and he came out, almost carried by two women, who were perhaps his dressers or his makeup artists. He crossed the street and he stopped because I was facing to him, right next to his trailer. He was surely afraid that I would wait for him and that I would start to annoy him. But I lowered my head, I didn't want to disturb him at all " , continues Niels Arestrup, who says he is still marked by the gaze of the actor. "It was three or four seconds with the gaze of this man who intimidated me, who impressed me, whom I greatly admired," he concluded.