Born on January 17, 1971 in Lyon, Sylvie Testud was only two years old when her parents separated. After being abandoned by her father, she finds herself raised alone by her mother with her sisters. Then, one day, the actress began to delve into her past. “My father disappeared when I was 2 years old. I didn’t even know his face. One day, while rummaging through a cupboard, I found his photo. I was his clone”, she told in the pages of the Styles supplement from L’Express. “In my imagination, he ended up becoming the Big Bad Wolf and us the Three Little Pigs.”
It was only at the age of 34 that Sylvie Testud, who had become an actress, met her father for the first time. “In 2006, I played Stefan Zweig’s Dangerous Pity at the theater in Lyon. One evening, I was walking on stage with my wheelchair – the character is paraplegic. My eyes fell on a man sitting on the steps . I recognized it at the second”, says the novelist. However, this long-awaited meeting took a completely different turn. “And there I find myself in front of a man with a sunny accent who nonchalantly admits that his life is shit. He was nothing like what I had imagined. I expected him to asking me questions”.
More the writer adds to our colleagues. “But he just said to me, ‘For you it’s cool. You have a great life.’ If at least I had felt hatred, it would have created a bond… But I didn’t feel anything. He asked me for my address and there, I was odious: ‘I have to leave, I don’t’. I don’t have time…’. A few days later, I sent him Gamines (his autobiography, editor’s note) with a note. He never answered me. It was my mother he wanted, not us. A failure that did not prevent him from pursuing his dreams in the spotlight…
Destined to make a career in comedy, Sylvie Testud went to Paris to make her debut there. Already attracted to the theater during her youth in Lyon, the history student first followed the free class of the Cours Florent, before the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art.
In the 1990s, the young Sylvie Testud landed her first screen appearances in Couples et amants, then The Story of the Boy Who Wanted to Be Kissed (in 1994). But it was German cinema that revealed her to the general public in 1997, with Beyond Silence, she won the Best Actress Award at the German Film Awards.
On the side of France, it will be necessary to wait until 2001 before Sylvie Testud obtains the recognition of French cinema where she shines brilliantly in Les wounds assassines. A role that will earn her the César for best female hope. Three years later, she confirmed her status as an actress by winning the César for best actress in the film Stupeurs et tremors.
“At the Césars, I was happy for my family who suddenly saw me as Cinderella going to the ball… But the most symbolically strong reward remains the medal of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, which we was handed over in 2004. My grandmother was a cleaning lady, she is almost illiterate. You can imagine the pride that this decoration gave her, “says the heroine of the biopic dedicated to the author Françoise Sagan in Télérama in 2008 .
A fulfilled woman in her career, Sylvie Testud is also a fulfilled wife and mother. Usually discreet about her private life, the author of the Knight of the Order of Merit (published in 2011) confided in her relationship with her childhood sweetheart Fabien, a researcher by profession. “The book moved him. He and I have been together for a long time. We sometimes put crazy pressure on each other”, confided the famous actress in Current Woman before discussing the flip side of her celebrity. “My companion is having a hard time with the fact that I earn more than him. It’s often me who signs the checks”.
However, the couple shares the love of their two children, Ruben (born in 2005) and Esther (born in 2010). “They seduce everyone”, she assured in the pages of Paris Match in 2015. “Ruben will be someone nonchalant, a little distant because he is shy. Esther will be a jet-setter”. No wonder when you know that her daughter has already taken her first steps as a model at only 5 years old. At the time, the pretty blonde head was chosen by the luxurious brand Bonpoint, among other children, to parade during Paris Fashion Week in 2016, as indicated by our colleagues from Gala.
