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French actor Canet began his career in theatre and television before he made a move to films. He starred in several films like Joyeux Noël, Love Me If You Dare, and The Beach. In 2006, he turned to writing and directing with Tell No One and won a César Award for Best Director! Now, the French actor opens up about his upcoming movie that is also being dubbed in the Tamil language with the title Asterix & Obelix: The Middle Kingdom
“My father owned almost all the Asterix comic books, and they were definitely his. When he wasn’t sharing them with me or my sisters, he’d dip back into them when he was alone, so it’s pretty moving now to be able to read his books with my children. That’s one of the reasons I got involved in this project—to make a movie for my children at last. For everybody’s children.”
Guillaume Canet was born in Boulogne-Billancourt to a family of horse breeders. Canet intended to become a show jumper and was a member of the junior French National Equestrian Team!
However, after a fall from his horse at the age eighteen he turned to acting and enrolled in the Cours Florent drama school. After working in various television shows and commercials, Canet made his film debut in the short film Fils unique.
His film Blood Ties was also selected to be screened Out of Competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival! So, when he was making and acting in the upcoming movie, “I have at least one quality, I think, which is recklessness! I mean, it doesn’t stop me from being realistic and serious but I want to maintain a carefree attitude by telling myself that the reason I’m on this project is that people have faith in me.
Then it’s up to me to do the best I can with what I know how to do. On a project like Asterix, once it’s launched, there’s no going back. More seriously, this is my eighth film as a director and my past experiences on set were very useful because even though I didn’t want to preoccupy myself with the scale of the budget, I still made sure I kept within bounds.
I also realised that even with such a huge budget, spending issues can arise. It’s crazy! The explanation is simple: every department working on the movie knew it was an Asterix and wanted to do the best possible job: sets, costumes, special effects, etc. The costumes, for example: Madeline Fontaine made them using dyes that dated back to Gallo-Roman times for greater authenticity.
All the dying was done by hand! On the soldiers’ uniforms, each little piece of leather was cut out by hand before being sewn, by hand also. For four hundred extras. An insane effort! So, yes, it involves spending a lot of money, but it pays off in the end because you see it there on screen.”
When he developed the story and characters, he really wanted to play Caesar. He started writing the character as depressive, madly in love with Cleopatra, who has conquered the Chinese market while he has to settle with “only” being known in his European empire. Maybe he saw certain similarities with his own life. He found it funny to see things as a sort of sequel to Rock n’ Roll, but talking it over with Gilles Lellouche, the team realised that playing on that chord again with Marion might seem a little bit stale. So he thought of Vincent Cassel, somebody he wanted to work with for a long time. And he saw Caesar in him.
It’s nuts, he has the exact profile of the comic book Caesar. He has that feline aspect, the right age and aura for the part, and the director cum actor thought it would work perfectly with Marion. In the end, given the scale of the project, not taking a role in the movie seemed like a good idea. Then came a bunch of meetings to discuss the cast and, of course, the characters of Asterix and Obelix. For the latter, someone had to step into the shoes of Gérard Depardieu, who had nailed the part from the very first movie.
He is Obelix! And he did the first four films, while three actors played Asterix. So they started going through the names of actors and, at one point, at Pathé, Jérôme Seydoux said to the director, “I don’t get it, Guillaume. Why not you? I mean, honestly, you’re young, you’ve got the energy to burn, you’re the little guy with the short fuse who always wants to prove he’s right. You’re the perfect Asterix!” Everybody around the table started chiming in, saying it was a great idea, and lead protagonist was thinking, “No way! How can I play the lead while directing a movie of this scale?”
And in the end, he accepted the part! “Because I realised that the two actors playing Asterix and Obelix had to be friends, and that’s when I thought of Gilles. It involved him gaining weight but I knew he had what it takes to play the character: the ability to play something childlike, a kind of near-poetic naivety. I went to ask him if he was ready to put on 15-20 kilos and take it on from Depardieu. Gilles was brave enough to accept, and I know that it only takes a minute to see nobody else but him in the part. He is touching, magical, and that makes me super happy because it was one of the major gambles in this adventure. I can assure you, Gilles did a great job: he worked out and bulked up to fill the costume and really become Obelix.”
Finally, he is proud of this movie, which is close to how he pictured it in his dreams. During all those years of preparation and the months of shooting and post, he never gave up doing his best. And he has only one wish with regard to Pathé and his producers, who invested a lot of money in the project: he would like the film to work for them.
