Rewarded at the age of 48 with the César for best actor for "Pacification - Tourment sur les Îles", a year after having already lifted the statuette for "In his lifetime", Magimel has won the makings of a great actor at the price of a dense and sometimes chaotic route.

After almost 70 films, a César in a supporting role for "La tête haute" (2016), a best actor award at Cannes for "La pianiste" (2001), the disheveled little "Momo" in "La vie est un Long Quiet River" (1988) no longer needs to inflate his torso as he thought he had to do then to impose it.

In "Pacification", by Spanish director Albert Serra, he delivers a performance as a freewheeling actor, embodying a High Commissioner of the Republic in Tahiti, who navigates with haughtiness and elegance from high society to underworld circles, from separatists to military.

An epic shoot: 580 hours of rush and thousands of pages of dialogue, according to the usual method of the director, which leaves unparalleled freedom to the actors.

"There are situations that evolve, which are created as and when (...) of what we shoot. So, there is a rather exceptional freedom for an actor", explained Magimel to AFP in Cannes, where the film was in competition.

If he is rewarded for this film, he also made an impression last year with "Revoir Paris", addressing the question of the attacks.

A role on the reconstruction, in which he was able to recognize himself: "I found things there that I understood, like repairing several people, and then (the character) does not victimize himself", explained the one who fought by the past of addictions.

"We lose it all"

Becoming a star at 13 with his role as "Momo" Groseille-Le Quesnoy, Benoît Magimel has always recognized the difficulty of having started so early, explaining that no one had "warned" him that one day we could lose everything.

Born in Paris on May 11, 1974, this son of a nurse and an early divorced bank employee confided to having experienced "difficult times" in his childhood.

Benoit Magimel wins the César for best actor for "Pacifiction - Torment on the islands", during the César at the Olympia in Paris on February 24, 2023 © BERTRAND GUAY / AFP

"At 12, I took care of the house, I watched my sister. I kept it like a fear of missing out".

An announcement in Liberation propels him onto the set of Etienne Chatiliez: it is "Life is a long calm river", which has become cult.

At 16, he quit school for the cinema.

It took a few years to emerge: it really started in 1995 with "La Fille Seul" by Benoît Jacquot and "La Haine" by Mathieu Kassovitz.

The young man lends his fine features to Alfred de Musset in "Children of the Century" (1999) with Juliette Binoche, his first great love and the mother of his daughter Hannah.

Then comes the consecration in Cannes with "La pianiste" by Michael Haneke where he embodies a seductive musician in the perverse hands of Isabelle Huppert.

Conscientious craftsman - "I have rarely seen someone deepen his roles to this extent", said Claude Chabrol of him -, the actor has played everything, kings, thugs, seducers, during a filmography sometimes uneven.

In 2017, the comedian with golden locks received a three-month suspended prison sentence for trying to buy cocaine.

In another case in 2016, he recognized a drug addiction "not dating from yesterday" and confessed to the judge "his shame".

As the trial progressed, we discovered a lost man far from the image of the male with the blue eyes of a sphinx and a split chin.

© 2023 AFP