This February 18, Stéphane De Groodt was a guest on the show A Sunday in the countryside, broadcast on France 2. The 57-year-old actor and humorist was questioned about his childhood, by the facilitator Frederic Lopez. In all sincerity, he revealed that he “I didn’t like[t] not school at all”, especially because he was often tackled because of his physique. “As I was rather strong, they called me ‘the big one full of soup'”, he elaborated, indicating that he had been very affected by these criticisms.
“When you have a problem like that, you close in on yourself,” said Stéphane De Groodt, who therefore had difficulty overcoming this ordeal and the gratuitous nastiness of his little comrades. “It conditioned my whole life afterwards,” assured the Belgian actor before developing his remarks: “When I first thought about becoming a racing driver, I said to myself ‘I can’t be a racing driver being that fat’, so that conditioned the fact of wanting to lose weight.” His relationships with those around him were also affected, as he confided in Frédéric Lopez’s show: “I felt like I wasn’t loved by others. […] We don’t like fat people!”
>> PHOTOS – Jenifer, Laeticia Casta, Seal… When the stars reveal their complexes
A dyslexic child who did not have a diploma
To try to reinvent himself, Stéphane De Groodt decided to “become an actor” in order to “to make laugh [s]are friends.” “That way, I would be accepted”, he added. On July 8, the comedian spoke in our columns about this complicated period that he experienced when he was younger. Dyslexic, he had difficulty understanding why school was so important, especially since he “wasn’t[t] not very well in [s]has skin” and that he “had[t] the feeling of not pleasing others. “I put myself in a posture of excessive and clumsy seduction. It haunted me for years,” he said. As for his academic difficulties, they concerned all subjects. “My mother was desperate because I didn’t have a diploma,” he added, emphasizing that he had made up for it by writing his first book, in 1996, followed by several other works.
Article written with the collaboration of 6Medias
Photo credits: France 2 screen capture