Actress learns on the job
Montreal-born Charlotte Le Bon has co-starred in Hollywood movies and French films yet she’s missed out on collaborating with a Quebec filmmaker. But it hasn’t been for a lack of trying.
The former model and comic weather girl on the French network show Le Grand Journal auditioned for a part in Quebec director Denis Villeneuve’s much anticipated scifi sequel Blade Runner 2049 with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford.
“I did a casting (call),” confirms Le Bon. “I didn’t get it.”
The 30-year-old did land the role of Ana in the historical epic The Promise, starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac.
It is Le Bon’s Ana who is mixed up in a love triangle with her American war correspondent boyfriend (Bale) and an Armenian medical student (Isaac) in 1914 Turkey.
While the onset of the First World War complicates their lives, they soon discover something even worse — an insidious plan to eliminate 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman government.
“I shamefully didn’t know anything about the genocide,” says Le Bon. “I learned a lot through the script.”
Knowledgeable or not, director Terry George pursued the Parisbased actress for the role despite her comedy past and the grim subject matter.
“I was in Iceland surrounded by volcanoes when my French agent called to ask me if I wanted to Skype with Terry,” she says of the director.
So Le Bon and George discussed the possibility. Two weeks later in New York she had a chemistry reading with Isaac. A week after that she was hired as the object of desire between the two leading men.
“I had a lot of fear and doubt,” Le Bon says. “At first, it didn’t compute that I could be Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac’s love interest ... I was a nightmare before the shoot.”
In Spain, where most of The Promise was filmed, she connected with Isaac and Bale in a 10-day rehearsal period before embarking on the four-month filming process.
As it turned out, George relied on Le Bon’s Ana to provide the movie with some wit in a few re-written sequences. “The story is intense and needs a bit of light,” she says. “Ana felt almost too perfect on the page, and I’m not good for that.”
Indeed, Le Bon does enjoy a giggle now and again.
“I was probably Christian’s best audience ever,” she says of Bale. “I would laugh at all of his jokes.”