Laetitia Casta is one of the most admired actresses in France. But for the needs of a film, a director dared to ask him more than astonishing … Concerning his physique.
Known for being a model and the muse of Jean-Paul Gauthier, Laetitia Casta is also among the best actresses of her generation. Of Asterix and Obelix against Caesar in 1999, at The Faithful Man in 2018 Passing by Gainsbourg (heroic life) in 2010, she is still keen to be in front of the camera. And the year couldn’t have started better for her. Featured at The crusade, in the cinema since December 22, 2021, she is also preparing to take the stage to play her only on stage Clara Haskil, prelude and fugue. A career as impressive as it is admirable. But during its beginnings, things were not very easy. In an interview with Telerama, the actress reveals that a director wanted to modify a very precise detail of his physique for his film.
“Maybe he was afraid that I would bite!“
It is a rather crazy request that Claude Zidi made to the actress on the set of her first film, Asterix and Obelix against Caesar. Indeed, the director wanted the “transform“and change his teeth. “He told me that my canines were too sharp and even asked me if we could file them! Maybe he was afraid that I would bite!“, she recalls. Then 21 years old, the young woman did not allow herself to be done: “I resisted, I never wanted to change anything. I have this strong character of my upbringing, which did not have only flaws“. A tenacity that she derives from her parents and the education she received.”At home, there was no question of letting oneself down, nor of complaining. I always saw my parents working a lot, my father on his construction sites, my mother as an accountant or housewife“, she explains.
Laetitia Casta facing a complicated start
Before making cinema, Laetitia Casta started her career on the catwalks. However, she would not have thought to break into this field. “I never dreamed of being a model. It was a job at the time that was not as envied as it is today“, she confides. She felt that she did not have the physique to: “I was not tall, I was a bit plump. I have even been called a ‘fat cow’“. But whether in front of the camera or in front of a camera, she could count on her parents, present to support her in her projects, but also in the event of more difficult moments: “They told me there were girls prettier than me, that was not what mattered. They had a sense of the realities of modest people. They were afraid that I would be disappointed“, she declares before concluding”while I wasn’t expecting much. “