Do you really know Line Renaud actress? Line Renaud, a comedy life is the new work dedicated to the career of actress of the young lady from Armentières. Released on November 3, it traces her life as an actress and her secrets, from her screen debut in 1946 in La Foire aux chimères, to her last film with Dany Boon Une belle course. Planet has collected the confidences of Jérémy Picard, co-author of this book written with four hands with Line Renaud. He gives us little-known anecdotes about the woman who spent more than 40 years on the screens.
“Comedy ultimately represents the most important part of my career: I was a singer for 15 years, a magazine leader for 20 years and I have been an actress for more than 40 years”, confides Line Renaud in the foreword. of this book. With modesty and talent, it is true that she has distinguished herself in all areas of comedy: cinema, theatre, television and series.
Jérémy Picard met Line Renaud very young at the age of 14 through comedy, one evening in January 2003, on the stage of the Palais-Royal theater in Poste Restante, alongside Jean-Claude Brialy. “My mother often took me to the theater in Paris. The play, which was very intellectual, didn’t really transport me, but Line’s acting, her presence, her charisma, really amazed me”, he recalls.
After raising awareness of AIDS in high school in which Line Renaud is also mentioned, he chooses to write her a letter. “She answered me kindly and since she didn’t really know how to do everything that is internet, I created a blog for her and when the social networks arrived, I started to manage them for her. We are over the time became very good friends”, details the theater enthusiast.
Jérémy Picard, author of Line Renaud, a life of comedy
“The actress part of Line Renaud has always interested me more than the singer or review leader part. I find that she really has a presence and has done extremely complex roles”, he assures. The genesis of the book on her life as an actress actually comes from the former agent of Line Renaud, Dominique Besnehard, who wanted to make a documentary about her career.
“When Dominique Besnehard had the idea of making this documentary about her acting career, I said to Line: ‘It’s true that your acting career is talked about very little’. When there are portraits of her on television, we always come back to the Cabin in Canada, Las Vegas, and finally quite a bit about her acting career, and so we wanted to do this book”, says Jérémy Picard.
©Hugo Publishing – Communication
In practice, Jérémy Picard has therefore collected as much information as possible about his films, especially the lesser known ones, thanks to documentation, period press articles, show programs, whether in the archives of Line Renaud or elsewhere. “Then I confronted that with the memories of Line”, confides the author of Line Renaud, a life of comedy.
“There are things that Line Renaud told me that she had never said. shoot for her since the producer was completely crooked and they made them shoot for a week without film for lack of money”, reveals the community manager of the artist.
©Jérémy Picard
Jeremy Picard.
The book is built by film with for each of them “Le regard de Line”. The author tells us that he appreciated the freedom of tone of the actress who never minced her words and delivered her truth without concession or ego. “For each project, the look and the distance she has is fascinating. She can quite say when it’s a success, but also indulge in failures, and tell very personal things”. She does not bother with sycophancy and can sometimes assume that she does not like to shoot with very recognized directors.
“I like the relationship she has with her profession. She tells us, for example, that when she toured with Lelouch, she assured that she did not find herself there, when we are used to hearing that all the actors love to shoot for Claude Lelouch. Line says that she did not feel comfortable with this method of improvisation without text and that she does not recognize herself in the Lelouch method”, reveals Jérémy Picard . An interesting confidence that reveals the way she perceives directors and her job.
Despite her great film career, for Jérémy Picard, Line Renaud probably had “her greatest roles in the theatre”, notably with La visite de la Vieille Dame in 1996. “A play in the extremely harsh Comédie-Française repertoire where she plays a woman who wants to satisfy her revenge and kill her ex-lover”, confides the friend of the artist. He also evokes the role of the actress in the play Very dear Mathilde, in which she embodies “a very dry woman full of resentments”.
“Much more tormented roles that she played on stage and that she did not have or less had in the cinema”. Jérémy Picard also evokes the TV movie La Reine Sylvie directed by Renaud Bertrand in 2006 for France 3, in which she plays a former announcer who has lost everything and who does everything to return to the front of the stage by going to live with one of her fans. . A TV movie that questions the relationship to notoriety and image.
During her career, Line Renaud has had multiple on-screen partners on whom she confides in this book dedicated to her career. There are two in particular of which she keeps fond memories for different reasons: the actor Michel Galabru and Philippe Noiret. “Michel Galabru, she met him several times. They started together in 1959 in L’Increvable in which Galabru played her husband when he was just starting his career and was very intimidated. They then found in the TV movie Polly West is back in 1993. Even if they did not have a scene together, they also found themselves much later in Les Ch’tis”.
Jérémy Picard explains that “they followed each other all their careers and he was a funny person with whom she got along well”.
Jérémy Picard, author of Line Renaud, a comedy life.
It’s a bit different for Philippe Noiret, who intimidated her a lot when she played with him for the first and only time in Ripoux against Ripoux in 1990. “Line was very impressed to play with him because he played César and Rosalie, an actor who was imposing. And she was very sensitive to his elegance and she says that he was the only partner who gave her flowers on the first day of filming. When she talks about Noiret, she says that he is a lord, really someone of a crazy class”, reveals the author of Line Renaud, a life of comedy. Line Renaud also has little-known links with comic actors, notably Bourvil, to whom she owes a success.
Line Renaud is now known to the youngest for the roles of comic old ladies, as is the case in Les Ch’tis by Dany Boon. A more popular and comic facet that the former singer and glamorous magazine leader loved. The young lady from Armentières also took pleasure in resuming her northern accent.
“She had a hard time losing her accent when she arrived in Paris in the 1950s because the northern accent was not glamorous. And when she had to find it again for Danny Boon, she realized that eventually , she had a lot easier to find it than to take it”, smiles Jérémy Picard. He specifies that if she really liked this role, it is first of all because she was able to find the North, to which she is very attached. “Playing in Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis or La Ch’tite Famill e, he also liked it because it was a return to his roots”. She also told me that she imposed that the filming of “In case of misfortune”, a diction co-produced for television, be done in the North of France.
If some thought that Une belle course, released in September 2022, was her last film, at 94, Line Renaud still has no intention of ending her career as an actress. Indeed, Jérémy Picard reveals that she already has a lot of projects underway for the coming year. She will shoot Dany Boon’s next film next year. Line Renaud should also participate in a TV movie written by Dominique Besnehard for France Télévisions in early 2023.
