What Acting Means For French

Yesterday was the French film César award, and I have been following it. Among all the nominees and winners, the Best Male Actor Antonio Reinartz caught my attention because he has the same last name as my friend whom I partnered with in a theater performance in Paris. When I looked up my friend´s Facebook, he was actually his brother. All of sudden, this guy who just won the most prestigious film award in France became approachable. Then, the fact that he is the president of an acting school in Paris, reinforced how approachable he is. Perhaps because I have signed up for a theater school in Paris, I felt this Reinartz guy could have just been an ordinary guy whom I hanged out with after a theatre class.

I don´t meant to write this post as that I know someone famous through so and so. No. I just think it is a good example about what it means to be an actor/actress in France. In China or in the United States, acting is an activity that keeps the whole country dreaming. It is so much intertwined with prestige, connections and moneyed class that, if you want to get acknowledged as a good actor, such as getting an Oscar award, you need qualities far more than a pristine love for acting.

On the other hand, acting seems a common passion in France. In an acting class, I asked a classmate where he worked . He said, ¨I am a janitor¨. I have never visited a country where acting feels more organic, home-grown than France, where I have met more actors, playwrights or theatre scholars than anywhere I know. I could perhaps draw an analogy with the wine, which, for French and Italians, is part of their lives, in contrast to the New World where your taste of wine has the extraneous function as signifying your status.

Even fabulous fame is achievable sufficiently with ¨naive¨ motives -- the love for the craft. I look up to some French actors/actress as the most intelligent persons I can think of, and devoured all their interviews on Youtube. They have so many intelligent things to say about acting and life that you can see how deeply entrenched they are in the knowledge of their craft. (In contrast, American actors are more (merely) charismatic or sensational than artisanal). 

Whenever I am in a country, I keep myself flexible enough so that whatever the people of that country is proud of, can also become my passion. In France, I repeated get exposed to theatre. When I went out with friends, I was often proposed ¨Want to see a theatre tonight?¨. And before I knew it, I had signed up four theatre classes and somehow ended up in two public performances. This is the same logic as in the United States, somehow I got swept in the entrepreneurship, or in Spain, in the guitar music and dance.

Maybe I am being too native about France --- it is easy to be so when it is about France. But as a foreigner, I am happy to just see the loftiest essence of that culture.