Antoine Chappey

Biography: life and films

It is a testament to Antoine Chappey's skill as an actor that you hardly notice him in many of the films he has appeared in. This is not because he lacks charisma but because he is so remarkably adept at creating characters that fit their milieux - whether that is in the police service or on a French housing estate - that you have no reason to notice him. When he is given more substantial roles, and, more recently, the leading role in a film, he never comes across as an actor playing a part. He always is the character he is portraying, and there is an authenticity and tangibility to his screen portrayals that sets him apart from most screen actors today. Instead of chasing after stardom, Chappey has made an admirable career as the consummate character actor, working mainly with serious filmmakers who can make the best use of his immense talents.

Born in 1960, Antoine Chappey started out as a musician before he made his screen debut in Patrick Grandperret's Mona et Moi (1989). Here he played a character that he resembled in real-life - a secondhand bookseller and bass player. His acting career got started when Cédric Klapisch gave him some small roles in a number of his films - Riens du tout (1991), Le Péril jeune (1993), Chacun cherche son chat (1996). In Xavier Durringer's debut film La Nage indienne (1993), he formed a romantic triangle with Karin Viard and Gérald Laroche in what resembles a 1990s version of Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962).

That same year, he took on one of his most memorable roles as an unsavoury Parisian who pursues a perverse relationship with a naive girl from the provinces (Margot Abascal) in Laurent Tuel's Le Rocher d'Acapulco (1993). Then Chappey played a very different character in Lucas Belvaux's comedy Pour rire! (1994), showing that he was also a capable comic actor as well as a gifted dramatic performer. He combined comedy and pathos brilliantly in Stéphane Brizé's Le Bleu des villes (1999) and made a great impact as an ordinary man at war with his brother (Benoît Magimel) in Xavier Beauvois's Selon Matthieu (2000). Chappey also added lustre to a later Beauvois film, Le Petit lieutenant (2005), stealing our sympathies as a committed cop whose world suddenly collapses in on him.

Antoine Chappey has worked with a wide range of filmmakers, including well-regarded or débutants auteurs - Claire Denis on J'ai pas sommeil (1993), Manoel de Oliveira on Je rentre à la maison (2000) and François Ozon on 5x2 (2003). He shows up briefly in Dany Boon's first feature as a director, La Maison du bonheur (2006), Gérald Hustache-Mathieu's idsiosyncratic thriller Poupoupidou (2011) and also Yves Caumon's Cache-cache (2004). Other notable directors he has worked with include Rachid Bouchareb (Indigènes (2006)), Roschdy Zem (Mauvaise foi (2006)) and Safy Nebbou (L'Empreint (2008)).

In René Féret's Le Prochain film (2013), Chappey played the on-screen partner to Marilyne Canto, who is also his partner in real life. The couple had already worked together - on Hervé Le Roux's On appelle ça... le printemps (2001) and Dominique Cabrera's Le Lait de la tendresse humaine (2001) - and would again play screen lovers in Canto's partly autobiographical film, Le Sens de l'humour (2013). Whilst Chappey has been busiest working for the cinema, he has also lent his talents to television, appearing in a number of series such as Le Grand Patron (2003), Cellule identité (2008), Maison close (2010) and La vie devant elles (2015). He has also appeared in some television movies, including Au nom des fils (2014) and Diabolique (2016).

Filmography

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