Gerard Depardieu is not your typical romantic lead. In fact, he`s probably the most unconventional-looking sex symbol in world cinema today. He`s just under 6 feet tall, but he`s also overweight and defiantly out of shape. His lank, shoulder-length brown hair frames a large face, with self-described ”peasant” features. He has a heavy jaw and an impressively bulbous nose that had to be only moderately enhanced for his starring role in the new film version of ”Cyrano de Bergerac.”
”No, I am not handsome,” admits Depardieu cheerfully. ”I think I am plain. But it does not worry me.”
It certainly doesn`t worry the French, who for the past decade or so have treated the actor as if he were a national treasure. In a sense he is. With over 60 films to his credit, the 42-year-old star has appeared in such acclaimed productions as Bernardo Bertolucci`s ”1900,” Francois Truffaut`s
”The Last Metro,” Alain Resnais` ”Mon Oncle D`Amerique” and Claude Berri`s ”Jean de Florette,” making him the country`s most popular and beloved actor.
Now Depardieu, with a little help from Australian director Peter Weir, has set his sights on America. He stars opposite Andie MacDowell in Weir`s new film ”Green Card,” which opened on Friday in Chicago, and which, he hopes, will introduce him to a far wider audience.
”It`s the perfect role for me, because I play a Frenchman, George Faure, who has just arrived in New York,” explains the actor. ”I have a job as a waiter in a restaurant. But I have a problem. I need a Green Card to be able to live and work here legally.”
Meanwhile, Bronte Parrish (MacDowell), a native New Yorker, has just found the perfect apartment. There`s just one small problem. The owners will only consider a married couple. But as any New Yorker knows, people will do almost anything for the right apartment-even marry a complete stranger.
So when a mutual friend arranges a ”marriage of convenience” for George and Bronte, he gets the Green Card and she gets the apartment. And they never have to see each other again. But the plan falls apart several months later when immigration decides to run a routine check on the couple.
”That`s when I have to move in with her and pretend that we`re really married,” says Depardieu. ”Immediately we find we hate each other.”
”Green Card” is quite a change of pace for director Weir, who scored big with his last film, ”Dead Poets Society.”
”I wanted to make a romantic comedy in the old tradition as a sort of challenge, because I knew how hard it`d be,” says Weir, who also wrote and produced the film. ”And I wanted to write something especially for Gerard.” Weir originally started working on an idea for ”Green Card” back in 1983. ”It went nowhere, but then my wife suggested adapting it for Gerard and I then ended up tailoring the project just for him. . . .
”I`ve seen all his films, and I`ve always admired his mysterious mixture of beauty and beast, child and man. What also attracted me is his unpredictability. Of course, he has enormous charisma and presence as well, and people love to watch him. But to me the key is unpredictability. Whether he`s doing comedy or drama, playing a villain or a hero, you can never be quite sure what he`ll do next. And that`s also a key quality about movies, even when you`re going to a genre picture.”
Weir is well aware of the risk in tailoring a project for a specific actor. ”Thank God he said yes, or I`d have been in real trouble. In fact, I`d have never done it without him,” he admits.
”I am naturally very flattered that Peter writes a film especially for me,” says a smiling Depardieu. ”Who wouldn`t be? When I see all his movies I realize they`re very near to my thinking, my sensibility. I like Australians and their films because they`re both violent and very sensitive. I could relate.
”I was also very attracted to the script,” he continues. ”For a Frenchman like me it was perfect, because even if my English is bad, it`s perfect for the part. Secondly, it`s a great comedic idea. How do you go in 48 hours from dislike to love? I love also the whole idea of a man and a woman chained together like this, as if they are prisoners. It`s very romantic I think.”
Depardieu, who is making his first major English-speaking movie with
”Green Card,” says that he purposely didn`t work too hard on his English for the role of George. ”Peter wanted to keep my tongue on its toes,” he says, laughing. ”He wanted me to sound uncertain, unsure of myself.”
Although there`s an interpreter present for the interview in the actor`s Los Angeles hotel suite, he`s largely ignored, as Depardieu speaks quickly and expressively in charmingly fractured English with the occasional French phrase thrown in for emphasis.
”The biggest problem for me is to speak English quickly, because when you make a comedy you can`t stop and think, you have to keep going, and that`s very hard,” he explains. ”I once did a French comedy with Sigourney Weaver and I told her, `Try to speak very fast even if you don`t understand everything, because the rhythm gives the comedy.` And when you`re angry with someone you have to speak quickly and say everything you feel. It`s the same thing. After that, everything was easy. But Peter didn`t want me to sound too good.”
The actor has high praise for co-star Andie MacDowell, last seen in
”sex, lies and videotape.” ”She is a superb woman,” he says. ”I loved working with her, because I love beautiful women-I`m French, after all. L`amour. And she`s very smart. We got on very well, and to get acquainted, Peter made us cook dinner together at her home, as if we were the
characters.”
Otherwise, says Depardieu, his preparations were minimal. ”I just thought of George as someone I could really be, and you don`t have a choice if you want to play the truth,” he says. ”I told Peter stories of my life, and how I thought perhaps one day I`ll stop acting and just start washing cars, for a different experience, and move to America. So I thought it`s possible for me to be this character, someone who comes from nowhere and makes an interesting story.”
Depardieu`s own story certainly makes interesting reading. Born in 1948 in the small country town of Chateauroux in central France, he was the third of six children of a sheet metal worker. ”We were poor but happy and completely free,” he says. ”They try to romanticize poor backgrounds, but the truth is it really is better to come from a poor background if you`re free.”
Growing up, Depardieu`s screen idols were largely American. ”I loved Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando, James Stewart, and anything Hitchcock,” he recalls. ”I always wanted to act but I never thought it was possible, especially as I left school when I was just 12.”
Moving to Paris when he was 16, Depardieu started to take acting classes at the Theatre Nationale Populaire, where he met his future wife, fellow student Elisabeth Guignot. A year later, he made his debut film appearance in Roger Leenhart`s ”Le Beatnik et le Minet.”
Since then, the actor has appeared in such hits as ”Les Fugitifs”
(recently remade in Hollywood-”far less poetic,” Depardieu says),
”Camille Claudel” and, most prized of all, ”Cyrano de Bergerac,” which won Depardieu the Best Actor award at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.
”It`s funny, but I had no big ambition to play Cyrano,” he says. ”When they decided to make it, I said yes, because every actor wants to play Cyrano, but I also knew we`d have to rework the play because it`s just too repetitious and too long. I think everyone can relate to him. Everyone has a little Cyrano inside them, because he`s a character that talks to the adolescent in all of us.
”The big problem is where to go after a character like Cyrano,” says Depardieu. ”Maybe Quasimodo. We`re working on a script. And I`d like to do something about Balzac because he`s such a strong, larger than life character.”
Although the actor seems to work tirelessly from project to project-Weir had to wait a year before he was free to shoot ”Green Card”-Depardieu insists that his career isn`t all-consuming.
He grins and pats his stomach. ”You know, I love to eat and drink well. I even like to make wine when I`m not working. I have a chateau in Anjou and my own vineyard, dating from the 13th Century, and the wine`s excellent. So if I get tired of acting, I can always do that.”
