Sophie Marceau: why she could have been called “Sophie de la Pompe”

Sophie Marceau could have worn a much less prestigious pseudonym. Know that it was at the age of 14 that Sophie Marceau, whose real name was Sophie Maupu, began her career as an actress. His first experience in the cinema will be the main role of the film La Boum (1980), to which France 5 devotes the special documentary The Eternal Boum: Story of a great unpretentious film this Friday, January 20. Would Claude Pinoteau have chosen the young woman with the emblematic fringe if she had had another name?

Sophie Marceau in Madame Figaro.

Sophie Marceau confided in an interview with Madame Figaro in 2021 that she was asked to take a pseudonym at the start of her career. “I was given a list of the streets of Paris, avenues, boulevards. I chose avenue Marceau to at least keep my initials. Well, I could have been called Sophie de la Pompe, but I didn’t want to not to the particle…” she explained with a laugh to the magazine. A complicated change of identity to ensure for the young girl, who was still living with her parents at the time, at the time. “The path was long, because everything fell on my head at a very young age and it could have been violent. Suddenly, at 13, you are someone else, we even change your name…”, remembers the unforgettable interpreter of Vic in La Boum.

Between the young woman of the time and the internationally recognized actress that she is today, there is a certain schizophrenia. Between Sophie Maupu and Sophie Marceau, “each has a role to fill, even if it’s the same”. “[This last] taught me a lot of things, she educated me, she opened doors for me, she probably brought light into me,” she told our colleagues.

As a reminder, when it was released in 1980, the film did not initially receive a very favorable reception from the public. It will take some time for word of mouth to stir up young people in theaters and establishes Sophie Marceau as the favorite actress of the French. The Boom will ultimately be the film that attracted the most spectators that year with 4,378,430 admissions, even surpassing The Empire Strikes Back. Three years later, the young actress will even win the César for best female hope for La Boum 2, the sequel to the first opus with Pierre Cosso.

A new success difficult to manage for the young actress at the start. “At the beginning, I rather suffered from it, because I was a kid and I was not ready for all that. The glory of ‘La Boum’, it was hell for me! actress last October in Le Parisien.Today, she has learned to live with this notoriety and even retains a great affection for this film.

“I can’t say I’ve had enough, because in people’s eyes, I see a smile. It reveals everything that this film evokes for them: their youth, their adolescence, an era… (.. .) Now, on the contrary, I would say that I am reaping the benefits, because this film has become a reference. My career is not limited to that, but it is ‘the Boom’ that inevitably comes back. Fortunately, , unlike singers, I don’t have to replay it every time (laughs)”, she joked to the daily.