Maxime Godart: how he soared his salary after Le Petit Nicolas

Released in cinemas in 2009, the cult comedy The little Nicolasdirected by Laurent Tirard, is the film adaptation of the comic strip of the same name, written by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé in 1959. This feature film features the character of little Nicolas,embodied on screen by Maxime Godart, who leads the quiet and idyllic existence of a little boy like the others. His parents, respectively performed by Kad Merad and Valérie Lemercier, love him dearly. He and his gang of friends are having a lot of fun and getting into all sorts of nonsense, until the famous day when he understands that his mother is pregnant. Distress sets in and Nicolas is already imagining the situation to come: a little brother will take his placeand his parents are no longer going to take care of him.

To play the title role of this comedy, the choice of Laurent Tirard very quickly fell on the young Maxime Godart, in particular because of his rather disturbing physical resemblance to the character, but also because of his determination to become an actor. “At nine years old, he has a very clear vision of the place he wants to have in society, of what he wants to do with his life. With his outgoing personality, I thought he wouldn’t be afraid in front of the camera. However, the reverse happened. On the first day, when a huge crane arm with a camera approached him for a first turn of the crank, he was petrified! At Maxime, even more than at the other children, the desire and the pleasure of playing were great. He never gave the slightest sign of fatigue or showed the need to stop.“, said the director at the time.

Maxime Godart on his first stamp: “I did anything”

Having experienced a crossing of the desert thereafter, Maxime Godart fell back into anonymity. Invited by Faustine Bollaert in the show It starts today Friday, February 25, 2022 on France 2the young actor, now 23 years oldconfided in how he spent the salary he had received to shoot in The little Nicolas. Maxime Godart first specified that he had received 10% of his fee immediately, which had allowed him to buy a trampoline, before receiving the rest of the sum at his majority. “I did anything“, confessed the young actor.

“In fact, I come from a family that I love very much, but which has no means. (…) I had no value for money. So when I hit my stamp, I thought I was a multi-millionaire, that I was going to live my whole life with it, and that I was going to have other films that were going to allow me to live on it. (…) As I was a student, I paid for alcohol for parties, restaurants all the time, trips etc. So, I did a bit of a mess, but I benefited a lot“, explained Maxime Godart.

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