Vincent Cassel on Mesrine, Black Swan, and Acting: 'You Need a Hard-On, Perpetually'

Is it because you'd lost your concentration?

I lost my confidence. It's like Tyson being knocked down once and then he doesn't win ever again! I said to the director, "I need to see all the dailies again, I need to rewatch everything. I think we really f**ked up." And he was really freaked out! He said, "Please, Vincent, don't say that!" [Laughs] The minute he freaked out, I felt secure again, but I needed that moment of panic to get tense again. You need to be extremely relaxed and confident, but I'm sorry -- you need a hard-on, perpetually. If you start to go a little soft, then it's not a good time.

You would think that a criminal like Mesrine would want to be as undetectable as possible, but he seemed to revel in his celebrity. Why do you think that is?

Yeah, there's a paradox in that, I agree with you. But you have to understand that Mesrine didn't use the press at first -- they used him.

But then he figured out how to use them back.

No, totally. Actually, I think that's the reason of his death. There was a magazine called Liberacion in France, and it's traditionally a left-wing journal. When this guy was escaping and robbing banks and turning the government into fools, they used him. They started to elevate him as an icon of the counter-power, and he became the star of all those newspapers. They would cheer for him, and when he read it, he was flattered. He knew that through there, he didn't have to rob as many banks anymore to be famous -- he could just make crazy statements. Through that process, he was the favorite celebrity of the French people, which really means a lot. People voted and people loved him!

But were they loving him or this image that had been spun around him?

I mean, this guy was like a clown! He was talking loud, he was saying incredible things, he was threatening the Ministry of Justice -- saying, "If you don't do this and this, I'm going to put bombs everywhere" -- so people were scared, but they were scared like they were of Muhammad Ali when he shook up the world. They were scared, but they were attracted to him. And I think he liked it so much that he went too far.

All the police were looking for him, and he managed to hide and at the same time be on the cover of Paris Match with a machine gun, a mask, hand grenades. He threatened the government in a long interview, and that was the end, really. I mean, the government really felt like fools at the time, and they couldn't afford it, so they decided to drop everything else and terminate the guy. That's what happened: They literally killed him without any trial.

The interesting thing to know is that none of the crimes he's been accused of have been proven today. The guy was killed in the street with seventeen bullets and one in the head to be sure, without any proof of anything. It was just because he was getting too loud.

Is it a conflict you can relate to somewhat? As an actor, you want to disappear into your characters, and yet you're still a celebrity -- your face appears on perfume ads. How do you reconcile the fact that you want to slip undetected as an actor with the fact that you're famous and have celebrity?

Yeah, it's totally contradictory. I agree with you that it's a tricky thing. You have to be careful, and you have to be clear with yourself. I think the real secret is not to take yourself too seriously, and then you can live with this thing. Actors who say, "I love when I'm not recognized," I think they're lying. If you do this job, I think it's because you want people to like you. It's a question of balance, really. You've got to play the game, but not too much.

So you can allow yourself to enjoy your own celebrity?

Of course I do! Of course. It's not on a huge level -- I can still walk the streets, I can still travel, I don't have to take private planes. I'm sure that for a lot of huge American stars, it must be very difficult to have a normal life.

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