Much like her character, Peppy Miller, Bejo is quickly becoming a star. Having already made her mark in French films, this Argentinean-born actor may soon be a household name. Here are five things to know about Bejo:
1. She had to get over extreme shyness to be an actor.
At age 5, Bejo knew she wanted to be an actor, but she didn't tell her parents until she was 9. "I wouldn't show off for my parents' friends," she says. "I wouldn't put costumes on or anything like that. I knew it was something I wanted to do, but I was too shy for any of that." In Bejo's first role, in a short French film, the director couldn't cut to any close-ups of Bejo because she was so nervous and shaky that her head would go out of frame. "I would have heavy breathing, so I had to really work on that," she says. "I really enjoyed acting, but I was very nervous, trying to be good. Now I don't try to be good or to do the scene right; I'm just trying to work. I'm not anymore looking for a result, which I was when I was young. When you're young, you think you have to do it right, right away, and you forget there's editing. You don't have to do the whole scene all good. You can do a little bit here and a little piece there, and that's the magic of cinema. But when I was young, it was hard [to get over that]."
2. She felt serious pressure to perform well in "The Artist."
One would think that if a director who was also your husband wrote you a leading role in his film, playing the part would be easy. But Bejo—who was starring in a role that her husband, Michel Hazanavicius, had written for her—was stressed at the start of filming. She knew how much work her husband had put into the script, how much time he'd spent raising the money for it, and how important the film was to him. It was difficult for her to loosen up and focus on her role in the first week. "I just wanted to please him so much," she says. She also worried that the crew and the rest of the cast would think of her as just the director's wife and not as a serious actor, even though she had been successful in France for years before she even met her husband. When it was time to shoot her first big scene, Bejo says, it felt like an audition: "I wanted to show everybody that I'm an actress and I'm here for a good reason." She says Hazanavicius said to her: "Relax. You're good. Don't worry. Just focus on your work." Knowing she had his support, she let the pressure go, and, thankfully, she says, everything went well from then on.
3. She thinks John Goodman is cute.
She loves the scene in which Peppy and George fall in love while doing a take over and over, but Bejo admits that her favorite scene to shoot was her blackmail scene with a studio head played by John Goodman. "I love John," she says. "He was great. He was so cute! He's such a good actor. I didn't have to do anything except look at him and try to seduce him, and it came out great. I loved working with him."
4. She got into character by telling Peppy's story over and over.
For "The Artist," Bejo worked with an acting coach who asked her on the first day to tell him the story of her character. "It was such a mess," she says. After two weeks of working together, he asked her to tell him Peppy's story again, this time from Peppy's perspective, such as "I went to see a movie with George Valentin." "It totally changed my point of view," Bejo remembers. "I had emotions in every special moment and cried while I was telling the story." At the end of her work with her coach, she truly felt like she was Peppy: "I was like an old woman talking about myself when I was younger and telling the story."
5. A painting at the Louvre will always remind her of "The Artist."
On Bejo's last day of coaching before filming "The Artist," her coach took her to the Louvre. They were walking around and talking about her character when a big painting caught her eye. They walked over to it and saw that it was Caravaggio's "The Fortune Teller," which in French was translated as "The Good Fortune." Her coach looked at her and said, "Whenever you feel like you're scared, just think about this painting. It's good fortune."
