FÉLIX MARITAUD
Meet French actor, Félix Maritaud. This hot, new talent is taking his don’t-give-a-fuck attitude to the screen and beyond.
This hot-right-now gay actor gives zero fucks!
A FRENCHMAN walks into your local arthouse cinema – he’s got swagger and sex appeal by le tonne. He effortlessly conveys a simple message: he could break your face as easily as your heart.
Bonjour, Félix Maritaud. Master of the intense on-screen stare, drop-dead gorgeous actor on the rise, and someone you really want to get to know, cinematically speaking.
Among his many tattoos is one suggestively positioned above his groin that reads rien à foutre.
The 27-year-old French actor came out of nowhere to star in the critically acclaimed, instant-gay-classic BPM (Beats Per Minute) playing Max, a young member of the burgeoning Paris chapter of the HIV/AIDS activist group ACT UP in the ’80s. Directed by Robin Campillo, the film has won many accolades, the Queer Palm and Grand Prize Of The Jury at Cannes in 2017 as well as six prestigious Césars, including Best Picture. Google Maritaud on that year’s red carpet and #swoon.
In true Hollywood style, the art graduate was originally spotted in a bar and asked to audition for the role. And he found a seamless connection to the character he was up for.
“Examining the politicisation of the body is something I know about [from my studies]. And on top of that, I like to have fun and I’m a fag. So when Campillo saw my photo, he said: ‘He could have been in ACT UP.’ And it’s true,” he told The Guardian earlier this year.
He could not have asked for a better calling card. Since BPM he’s not been out of work, appearing in several films in the past 12 months including the TV movie Boys playing Jonas, a self-destructive thirtysomething whose life careens from one low point to another. We discover he’s grappling with something that happened when he was younger while beginning to explore his sexuality with a schoolmate. As the older incarnation of Jonas, Maritaud excels. “The superb Maritaud uses all of his physicality in the role. Earthy and loose, he’s both charming and introspective,” wrote Jack Kline in Boyz magazine. The slow-build thriller was a great next step.
It’s his latest film, however, where he really shines. In Sauvage, the first feature directed by Camille Vidal-Naquet, he’s front and centre as Léo, a hustler making a living in a rundown area of Paris, the Bois de Boulogne.
Based on Vidal-Naquet’s time spent among sex workers in the area, this confronting, erotic, impressive film is a no-holds-barred look at the life of those who trade in physical intimacy, where often the best hope is to find a sugar daddy who’ll take you away from it all.
“It’s not a cynical point of view,” the director explained to Electric Ghost. “It’s just a day-today basis with no judgement. I don’t say that what he is doing is great, but I don’t condemn it as well. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m not saying anything. I just want us to live with him.”
Maritaud’s Léo is after love and security, but at the same time rails against such things in order to have life on his own terms. He’s not someone audiences will automatically root for, but that’s not a bad thing.
“It’s quite an elusive character, actually,” Maritaud has explained. “We can’t figure him
out. Or understand him completely. Maybe within him, this life is the life that makes the most sense to him. By that I mean I don’t think he prostitutes himself to escape misery or to make money. He does it because he needs to give love, he needs a loving connection, and he’s incapable of creating it within the society he inhabits.”
It’s the type of role actors kill for – edgy, urgent, tender, dark, brutal. And Maritaud kills it. Variety lauded his “extraordinary performance” saying, “[Maritaud] throws himself into Léo’s mental and bodily selfpunishment with such unguarded conviction that one’s concern for character and actor become oddly entwined.” The industry bible then stated that while his character’s future is potentially unclear, for the actor, it’s “unambiguously bright”.
Helmer Vidal-Naquet is also full of praise for his leading man: “What impressed me the most about him is that he isn’t afraid of anything. He can do anything, get completely lost in his character, whatever the scene, without watching himself play,” he told The Irish Times.
“Félix is a really instinctive actor; on set he throws himself into the scene, whereas I am careful, I move slowly, I hesitate. Yet, even though we took different paths, we always followed the same direction.”
The film premiered at Cannes last year and saw Maritaud bestowed with the inaugural Louis Roederer Rising Star Award presented during Critics’ Week. Something which, if nothing else, has cemented him as the hot young thing: you’ll find him, shaved head and body-ink visible, in this year’s artwork for the non-competitive section of the iconic festival.
He’s more than ready for his close-up.
“My job as an actor demands a bit more than just guessing an interpretation of a person. I have a view on things, and my own way of creating,” he’s says.
And he can be as ballsy as any of the characters he’s played, taking none other than French acting rebel Béatrice Dalle (who shot to fame in the famous 1986 erotic drama Betty Blue) as his date to the recent César Revelations event.
It seems he’s found a perfect mentor in the outspoken Dalle. After a Guardian journalist remarked on his use of the word “faggot” he retorted: “Society has spent its time describing me like that to put me to one side. Me, I’m empowered enough now to lift up my head and say: ‘Yes, I’m a fag.’”
However, the actor is also aware that he’s becoming the go-to for playing characters that conform to his sexuality and he’s ready to break free.
“I don’t feel to be the queer ambassador of the French movie industry even if I’ve played in four gay movies in one year. Being queer for me is like drinking a coffee every morning, it’s my life, my identity. I don’t want to be in a box just doing LGBTQ movies. It will be boring for me and boring for others.”
It’s little surprise, then, to discover that among his many tattoos there is one suggestively positioned above his groin that reads rien à foutre, which translates as “don’t give a fuck”.
With that sort of attitude, we’re more than ready to see what’s next for this Gallic bad boy. He’s an injection of queer brusqueness that performers such as Janelle Monae, Ezra Miller and Billy Porter are bringing to the table, so we hope Hollywood is taking note.
With no fucks to give, he’ll travel light, and he can soar.