From his angry young man in La Haine (1995), to his Capoeira-loving Ocean’s 12 sidekick and his Cesar-award winning Mesrine, Vincent Cassel, 44, gives his all: head, heart and muscle. We sat down at Manhattan‘s Mercer Hotel to discuss his domineering ballet master in Black Swan. I found him intense, playful and every bit the French gentleman (no talking with his mouth full despite the steak on the plate before him!).

TA Is there a difference between making films in France and in America?

VC I don’t think it has any thing to do with the nationality. It’s just that it changes from one director to the other. You can’t compare a Darren Aronofsky to Oliver Stone. There is this idea that it’s very different from the French point of view to work in America blah, blah, blah. But I think it’s different from one person to the other, not from one country to the other

TA What was it like with Aronofsky?

VC Easy. We’re the same age, the same sensibility. I like him, first of all. I‘ve been watching him not because I felt that one day I would work with him but because I was interested in his path, his choices. While he was shooting The Fountain we were shooting Renegade. It was a shamanic western. It had a lot to do with The Fountain. There was some thing else in common: It was a flop.

TA And now you share a hit. What was it like creating Thomas Leroy in Black Swan?

VC it was a coming back home. I grew up in the very environment, in studios and backstage and onstage because my father was dancing.

TA: Gene Kelly discovered your father, Jean-Pierre Cassel, tap dancing on stage, right?

VC He was a dancer and an actor. We had a pretty close relationship with Michael Bennett, director of A Chorus Line. My father portrayed Zach, the director. So he was doing more or less the part I’m playing in Black Swan: very demanding, sadistic, tough on the dancers. When I read the script I felt like, oh, I know that world.  [Read more…]