If Fabrice Luchini has sometimes played heads of families in the cinema, he has not always lived up to his own role as father. And his only daughter, Emma, born in 1979 from his romance with a journalist.
This Sunday, February 1, France 2 is broadcasting the film The Little Onein which Fabrice Luchini plays Joseph, a father who, after the death of his son and son-in-law in a plane accident, sets out to find the surrogate mother of his future grandchild. A father hen role that could have stuck with him. But that was without counting his failed departure with his only daughter, Emma Luchini, born in 1979 from his relationship with the journalist and editorial secretary Cathy Debeauvais.
Fabrice Luchini was an absent father: “It’s not so happy to have a father like me”
Now aged 46, she herself has launched a career in cinema. In 2010, Emma directed her first feature film, entitled Sweet Valentinein which she notably directed Vincent Elbaz and Louise Bourgoin. In fact, she even had her father play in one of her films: A promising startreleased in 2015. Since then, she has been rather discreet.
Father and daughter therefore have the same passion. But they weren’t always close. Indeed, the 74-year-old actor has long been an absent father. “It’s not so happy to have a father like me. Anyway… She seems to take me as I am. I haven’t been a good father. As Claude Berri said: ‘When you’ve been a very good son, it’s difficult to be a good father'”Fabrice Luchini himself admitted in the show The Couch.
Before concluding: “It got better at eighteen. We managed to have a fairly harmonious and exciting relationship. But, I wasn’t good, that’s indisputable”.
Fabrice Luchini father “too bulky” ? “He did everything to discourage me”
A filial relationship which therefore had difficulty building as Emma Luchini confided to Sunday newspaper in 2015: “As a child, when I was asked about my father’s profession, I most often wrote: butcher. It’s not trivial (…) I have a wonderful mother, I never grew up with Fabrice. That’s why I always called him by his first name. On the other hand, the taste for beautiful texts, for authors, is him. I wanted to become a writer, but I was crushed by the simple idea of writing. My father was too cumbersome”.
“Telling him that I wanted to direct was like telling him that I wanted to prostitute myself. A disaster. He did everything to discourage me”she even added. More recently, Fabrice Luchini, who has shared his life with Emmanuelle Garassino since 2018, joined his daughter at the microphone of France Inter: “She took me for her cousin so there is still a little problem”.
