- Nathalie Spilmont, Hors-la-loi (Outlaws!), France, 1984. Inspired by Coppola’s Outsiders, realisateur Robin Davis, wanted unknowns. He told his casting director Dominque Besnehard: Find me a new James Dean and Natalie Wood. Fifteen of them! With four assistants for the first time, he put ads in papers and film magazines and combed through colleges, schools, gyms, night clubs, streets and suburbs. They found 300 kids, but too young for such a violent movie ruled the Youth Commission. Older actors were targeted. Valeria, Patrick Aurignac, Vincent Perez, Marie Trintignant made “extraordinary tests.” Juliette Binoche was not sexy enough said productuer Alain Sarde. (Nor was Isabelle Pasco but she had been sent to auditions by Polanksi, so she had to be sexy!). The film flopped, forcing Davis to serve the rest of his career in TV. Valeria is the sister of the model-turend-singer-turned-ex-First Lady of France, Carla Bruni Sarkozy.
- Sylvie Testud, Lourdes, Austria-France-Italy, 2009. Catching sight of the script’s title, Testud said she was not into being a nun – nor ridiculing religion. Then, she read it and fell for the woman in a wheelchair, off on a life-changing pilgrimage to the iconic site in the Pyrenees Mountains. That was 2008. A year later, she had another gig and passed her chair to Valeria.
- Léa Drucker, L’été dernièr, France, 2022. The Italian star, sister of the former First Lady of France, singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, turned down what would have been her 100th screen role – in favour of a 37-minute short called La pupille. Italian Alice Rohrwacher directed and Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón produced – rather generous of him considering he’d made his own account of girls in a boarding shool, A Little Priincess, in 1994.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 3