Alexis Patri 2:00 p.m., October 09, 2021

At the microphone of Isabelle Morizet in the show "There is not only one life in life" on Saturday, the actor Mathieu Amalric looks back on his personal and professional career.

And especially on his childhood in the 1970s when the work of his parents, journalists for "Le Monde", took him from the United States to Russia.

INTERVIEW

Before becoming one of Arnaud Desplechin's muses (

The sentinel

, 

How I 

quarreled (my sex life), Kings and queen, A Christmas tale, Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a plains Indian), Three memories of my youth, the ghosts of Ismaël), the actor and director Mathieu Almaric grew up roused to the rhythms of the affections of his parents, two journalists for 

Le Monde

. A family situation which led him in the 1970s from the United States to the USSR, then in the middle of the Cold War; as he explains on Saturday on Europe 1, on the occasion of his invitation to Isabelle Morizet's show 

Il ya pas que 

a life in the life for the films 

Tralala 

and 

Tighten me strong

.

>> Find Isabelle Morizet's shows every weekend from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in podcast and replay here

From five to eight years old, Mathieu Almaric grew up in Washington, before moving to Moscow, where he lived until he was 12 years old.

Either in Nixon's America from 1970 to 1973, then directly in the Soviet Union of Podgorny and Brezhnev.

"It seems normal when you are a child to be carried around like that", estimates the actor.

"We are a bit torn from budding friendships that suddenly fall apart. But it was later that I realized that it was special as a childhood."

Washington-Moscow in the trunk of the family Volvo

From the United States, Mathieu Amalric mainly remembers the music his mother listened to. "Janis Joplin, Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan," he lists. But he also keeps images in memory, at the height of a child. "There was the

Bread and Puppet

theater

, the hippies in the street, a very green Washington, the big kitchens, learning English in front of

Sesame Street

, the breakfasts in front of a very small TV. And then, going straight to Moscow, "he recalls.

Mathieu Almaric, however, did not choose the most direct route between the two competing world powers of the time.

"I remember the long journeys in station wagons in Volvo. We crossed all the countries of the East", specifies the actor.

"The Volvo was packed. I was in the trunk in the back, behind the suitcases, stretched out. My brother and sister were in the backseat."

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"It was my mother who initiated all of these extraordinary trips to us. There were vacations in the southwest, in Montauban, where my father comes from, with the cousins," continues Mathieu Amalric. "We would stop in Brussels to see a painting exhibition for my mother. Then we continued to Prague, Warsaw, and we arrived in Moscow. We made the trip every year for summer vacation. The last year, my mother wanted us to go through Finland and therefore through Saint Petersburg, which was called Leningrad at the time. We went up to the polar arc. "

During his long journeys by car through Europe divided between the two political blocs, the young Mathieu Amalric discovers the French-speaking song with Jacques Brel, Barbara, Marcel Mouloudji, Yves Montand and Georges Brassens that his father listened to.

KGB microphones coming out of the walls

When the little one arrives (or returns) in Russia, the young Mathieu Amalric finds all that makes his life there between his eight and his 12 years.

"Moscow is cold, it's figure skating. It's the pony," poetizes the actor at the three César, also awarded at Cannes.

"I had a pony called Suba, which means destiny. Moscow is also music and chess games."

More prosaically, the young boy, who already spoke French and English, had to learn Russian.

“When you're a kid, it just happens! And then my mother enrolled me in the Neighborhood Conservatory of Children's Music. I was the only foreigner at the time. I was in American school and I was taking correspondence courses from the French school in the evening. ", explains the adult he has become.

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"It upset me": Mathieu Amalric defends the end of the season of the "Bureau of legends"

“At the time, everything was done so that foreigners and Russians did not see each other especially. There was what was called the ghetto, where all foreigners were parked, with cops at the entrance so that there is as little communication as possible, ”he continues. This desire for control of the Russian state was evidently found in the work of his father, correspondent for 

Le Monde

. "My father had a secretary who was chosen by the KGB. It happened to us, when we slammed a door too quickly, to see a microphone coming out of the wall," the actor is still surprised today.

But keeping foreigners away did not prevent Mathieu Amalric's parents from defying the authorities and hanging out with political dissidents.

"This is how they became very close to Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani, to Vladimir Vyssotsky, this singer who married Marina Vlady and who was not allowed to sing in public, to Lili Brik, love by Vladimir Mayakovsky, all the writers who wrote by samizdat, that is to say things under the cloak, "he lists.

Cinema debut thanks to dissident Otar Iosseliani

"That was what attracted my parents. So I met these people. But it seems normal when you're a child. My mother took me to the Bolshoi to listen to Rostropovich, Oïstrakh, Richter ...", adds the actor. It is also thanks to Otar Iosseliani, known throughout the world and awarded at the Venice Film Festival and the Berlin Festival, that Mathieu Amalric chooses the path of cinema.

"He's someone who never films an actor," explains Mathieu Amalric.

“He takes silhouettes of people he loves. And he has known me since I was a kid. It could have been my brother. It was me and it's completely crazy. It was for the movie

The Favorites of the Moon

, I was 17 and it changed my life. "

The actor will return for Otar Iosseliani in 

The butterfly hunt

 in 1992, 

Farewell, floors of the cows! 

in 1999 and 

Monday morning

in 2002.