Sophie Marceau spent part of her life in the United States, but she mostly has bad memories of this period. Why didn’t the 59-year-old actress like Los Angeles?
Sophie Marceau has not only left her mark on French cinema. She also had international visibility. In the 1990s, she made several English-speaking films and got noticed in Hollywood, notably as James Bond Girl in The world is not enough in which she opposite Pierce Brosnan. During this period, the actress resided in the United States but she doesn’t only have good memories…
Sophie Marceau, marked by her life in the United States: “It was not at all my element”
In the 90s, Sophie Marceau spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, but the City of Angels didn’t conquer her and she quickly realized that she didn’t fit the mold. “I went through an American experience, but it wasn’t for me. Los Angeles, boredom, uneasiness. Not my element at all. Of loneliness and incomprehension”, she confided to Madame Figaro. A place with which she still feels out of step today: “This country scares me. There was no tomorrow. They didn’t miss me. I was completely out of place. Completely“. At the time, the actress did not correspond to a certain archetype of the French woman that the Americans had imagined.
“I am very French. But I wasn’t the Frenchwoman they imagined… French women want to be ‘à la française’, like an ‘auteur film’, that is to say cool, not sophisticated, while Americans fantasize about femmes fatales, an image of us that is ultimately very outdated“, detailed the mother of Vincent, 30 years old, and Juliette, 23 years old.
Sophie Marceau, “humiliated”? “I said no…”
The one who was revealed at 13 by her role in the film The Boom began her career in a complicated context, especially for young girls and women, who had to submit to numerous male demands to succeed. But already very young, Sophie Maupu, her real name, knew how to protect herself: “In the scenarios, there was always a moment where the girl was humiliated, for nothing, for free. I said no, which eliminated a lot of projects. I was young, I hadn’t formulated things clearly, but I could see that there was a fairly widespread way of treating women, and that didn’t suit me.”
The one who quickly had to navigate alone in a world of adults acquired her independence very early, which certainly helped to forge her liberated and autonomous personality. “I was emancipated very early: at 16, I lived alone. Looking back, I find it a little surprising, even if I am convinced that we should not take teenagers for idiots: they know how to manage. Anyway, I managed“, she explained.
