{"id":2616,"date":"2016-04-12T13:33:50","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T11:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2025-10-23T15:28:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:28:56","slug":"olivier-rabourdin-talks-john-jefferson-selve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/2616\/olivier-rabourdin-talks-john-jefferson-selve\/","title":{"rendered":"Olivier Rabourdin talks to John Jefferson Selve"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photography by Vassilis Karidis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Olivier Rabourdin is an actor. His face encapsulates the myriad paths of French cinema. He represents both the most niche arthouse cinema and today\u2019s mainstream cinema, characterised by television series. This actor has both a man next door side to him and an unsettling strangeness, thanks to his deep blue eyes, somewhat unexpected or out of place in this face marked with lines that have been lightly and perfectly etched into it over the passage of time. It is in his dulcet tones that he tells us more about himself and his work.<\/p>\n

JOHN JEFFERSON SELVE: You mentioned that you\u2019ve just got back from a long trip. Where were you?<\/p>\n

OLIVIER RABOURDIN: I\u2019ve just got back from Guyana. I arrived there at the end of July for a series directed by Kim Chapiron. I play one of the main parts. It\u2019s about illegal gold mining, Guyana and the Guyanese, all these mixed peoples you find there. Gold is a metaphysical subject.<\/p>\n

JJS: Are people on a quest for gold? OR: Yes, all these people who are chasing after gold don\u2019t really need it, deep down. Gold represents something else for them. My character is chasing after eternal youth, the dawn of life that he\u2019ll never find. JJS: Did you travel around?<\/p>\n

OR: Yes, it takes place in Cayenne and in the jungle. There are Creole, African, Brazilian and N\u00e8gre Marron (those who escaped from slavery) actors. These people reinstated villages in the forests, next to the American Indians. It\u2019s a very rich and complex country, full of different people, and it\u2019s also a somewhat abandoned French colony.<\/p>\n

JJS: That kind of an immersive experience is pretty rare, no?<\/p>\n

OR: Yes, it\u2019s goes beyond simple travelling. I left for five months without going home. I had never experienced that before\u2014and in such an extraordinary country as well. I didn\u2019t expect to meet so many people and be so moved by them; most of them have fled from something or they are following a dream, but they all have powerful stories.<\/p>\n

JJS: Is the way of life there very different?<\/p>\n

OR: It is in the forest, so you watch where you step, but it\u2019s not hostile. There is a different approach. There the forest belongs to the state but people make it their own: foraging, hunting, fishing\u2014and they live on benefits. It\u2019s a country we never talk about. It\u2019s true that there is poverty but there are also advantages to having been abandoned by the French Republic. The state has withdrawn from everything that isn\u2019t to do with the space centre in Kourou.<\/p>\n

JJS: Can you tell us about your career path?<\/p>\n

OR: I was born in Paris, I studied science and literature and I didn\u2019t know what to do\u2026 And then I attended drama lessons when I was about 20. I\u2019m from a middle class background. Ever since I was a child I loved the cinema\u2014I often went with my grandmother. We\u2019d see the big up-and-coming filmmakers: Arthur Penn, Coppola, Scorsese\u2014 I saw it all. Theatre was another world. I discovered that actors could be people like us, eating in restaurants, driving a car; I discovered that it was a profession. It wasn\u2019t only the stars on the posters. So I went to Nanterre and I worked under the auspices of Patrice Ch\u00e9reau. Then I had 15 years of really struggling, even if I had two or three prestigious things, like Hamlet with Patrice Ch\u00e9reau. The `90s were very difficult. I was a chauffer, removal man and lots of other little odd jobs. I was certain that I was going to fail in this milieu. And in around 1999-2000, I started to come back, to make a living.<\/p>\n

JJS: How old were you?<\/p>\n

OR: 40. I was on the brink of a break up, it was hard\u2014I was almost at the brink of destitution. And then in around 2004 I started to film. People were interested in me. Since then, each year has been better than the last. But at that time I had Arnaud Desplechin\u2019s film, Kings and Queen, and a very important scene in a Thomas Vincent film, and that launched me. From that moment, I started to work for quite prestigious television and on arthouse films.<\/p>\n

JJS: Can you work in any genre?<\/p>\n

OR: Yes, because I also then found myself in Taken with Liam Neeson and the film became number one in the US box office! Having done that, I can work in any cinematic register, which is an incredible opportunity. Many actors\u2014even established actors\u2014don\u2019t have that opportunity to have such varied roles. I\u2019m the happiest man in the world for that.<\/p>\n

JJS: But even before then, you had acted in a lot of films.<\/p>\n

OR: Yes, I had lots of small parts, two or three days on set maximum, but I was fortunate to have interesting scenes through these small parts.<\/p>\n

JJS: Do you have memories of films that you are particularly fond of?<\/p>\n

OR: No, I wouldn\u2019t put it like that. I love filming\u2014 I\u2019m happy on set. So yes, there were films that changed my career, films that had more impact, but I have nothing but excellent memories of all the filming I\u2019ve been involved with. I\u2019ve met only great people. But what\u2019s certain is that directors like Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Marchal and Xavier Beauvois allowed people to discover me in very good films.<\/p>\n

JJS: And you started out with the great director, Patrice Ch\u00e9reau?<\/p>\n

OR: He\u2019s my father. He taught me everything, I loved him, I hated him, I admired him, I feared him for years. And then we lost touch. He got in touch with me just before he died. We were supposed to do Shakespeare\u2019s As You Like it together, the subject of which is reconciliation. He died shortly after this proposition, but I had the chance to tell him that he was my theatre father and that I loved him. That\u2019s a huge opportunity. There was nothing but tenderness left between us.<\/p>\n

JJS: In general, how would you explain your success?<\/p>\n

OR: I\u2019ve been very lucky. In the first part of my career, it was never me that was chosen and I didn\u2019t understand why. Now it\u2019s the opposite and I still don\u2019t understand why! I\u2019ve met so many talents in my life and it\u2019s not talent that leads to success. There are two factors: the first is persistence\u2014 I was on the edge but I said to myself, even if it kills me I will do this job\u2014and the other is luck! Today I\u2019m in actors\u2019 heaven. I don\u2019t need anything else. The fact that success came to me late means that I completely appreciate what I\u2019m living now.<\/p>\n

JJS: Have you ever wanted to do something else in cinema\u2014write or direct, for example?<\/p>\n

OR: For a very long time, no\u2014I was so happy with what was happening\u2014and now I daydream maybe about directing, but no pressure\u2026 We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n

JJS: Do you have the feeling that your childhood was the foundation for your relationship with cinema?<\/p>\n

OR: I have a very vague memory. I must have been three or four years old. I was with my mother, maybe a neighbour, in the 18th arrondissement in Paris. We had seen a film called Lobo le Loup. I don\u2019t remember the film but I just remember one scene: animals running past, to music, and I was very moved by this image. It was a really strong emotion, filled\u2014strangely, given my age\u2014with nostalgia. I can\u2019t describe this feeling, but I was deeply moved. When we left the cinema, I started crying but I didn\u2019t know why. That was my first big emotion in cinema. An image, animals running, music, and me in tears a quarter of an hour after the end of the film.<\/p>\n

JJS: And literature?<\/p>\n

OR: I can only give you a summary. We are always in the latest book that we are reading. But let\u2019s say that in theatre, it centres on Sophocles, Shakespeare, Beckett, Chekhov, Ibsen\u2014those are my big emotions. As for novels, La Com\u00e9die humaine by Balzac, L\u2019\u00c9ducation sentimentale by Flaubert, which is a terrifying portrait of a generation, but also Proust\u2019s \u00c0 la recherche du temps perdu and C\u00e9line\u2019s Le voyage au bout de la nuit and Mort \u00e0 cr\u00e9dit.<\/p>\n

JJS: What about contemporary literature?<\/p>\n

OR: I would say The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. It\u2019s a great book that mocks religion but also celebrates the magic of the world.<\/p>\n

JJS: What can we wish you for the future?<\/p>\n

OR: That everything continues like this!<\/p>\n

Originally published in Dapper Dan magazine 13, 2016. Interview by John Jefferson Selve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Olivier Rabourdin is an actor. His face encapsulates the myriad paths of French cinema. He represents both the most niche arthouse cinema and today\u2019s mainstream cinema, characterised by television series. This actor has both a man next door side to him and an unsettling strangeness, thanks to his deep blue eyes, somewhat unexpected or out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-13","tag-interviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QZgE-Gc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2767,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions\/2767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}