"You have to be polite enough to laugh at your sorrows": while passing through Villeneuve-Loubet, Stéphane Guillon spoke to us about his philosophy and his projects.

When we meet Stéphane Guillon, he's just arrived from Lumio, the village in Haute-Corse where he's taken up residence, in a house with a splendid panorama. We imagine that there, with this incredible sea view, he must feel like he's permanently on vacation. Not really, actually.

"I have the same problem as my mother: I'm hyperactive. I never sit down and I only stop in the evening, when I go to bed. These last few months, I've been working on writing a film. I've just finished. And besides that, I'm very busy with my house. 5,000 square meters of land in the maquis, it's a real hot potato. When I arrived, it was only brambles and tuff, a mixture of earth and sand," assures the actor, before talking with a certain delight about the terraces he has built.

“Restoring the essence of the text, its strength, its vibration”

After this introduction to architecture and geology, we got to the heart of the matter: his visit to Le Rouret for the Festival of Words last Friday. In front of the audience at this free event organized by the Departmental Council, Stéphane Guillon had chosen, in consultation with the organizer, Frédéric Garnier, to read from Avant que la mémoire s'efface . Quelques paroles maritimes, the book by the charismatic navigator Olivier de Kersauson (2024, Cherche Midi).

"I had in mind Kersauson's verve and cheekiness when he talks about life in general, and the sea in particular. And I thought it might fit with my spirit. The difficulty is to compose with this kind of character with a particular phrasing. I had experienced the same thing while preparing Il a la côte Devos! with Daniel Benoin [the director of the Anthéa theater in Antibes, editor's note]. For both of them, you must not be in imitation, you must try to restore the essence of the text, its strength, its vibration."

The difficult art of detachment

Delving into the sailor's book, Stéphane Guillon found a few passages that resonated with him. "He writes that you have to be able to ignore what people say about you and move on. There will always be grumpy people. Especially today, with social media, it's impossible to please everyone. And from the moment you're well-known, you're suspect."

Did it take him a long time to learn to keep his head down? Yes. "I made a lot of mistakes, I responded head-on, I sometimes got angry, it takes a long time to get away from it all. I think that's Kersauson's strength, that he has a kind of poise, a nonchalance, which is perhaps due to the fact that he has sailed offshore."

Mougins, his eternal refuge

By publishing Fini de rire (2024, Albin Michel), our man doesn't seem to have been bothered by what people will say. In it, he recounted how he left his partner, Muriel Cousin, their blended family of seven children (three each and one together) to start a relationship with a woman 28 years younger than him, who ended up dumping him by email.

"It's always polite to laugh at your sorrows, it seems to me. It was necessary, it helped me a lot. I also tried to do something funny, I think it is."

This cathartic text took shape near Mougins, in another incredible house, long-standing in his family. "It's a timeless, unspoiled place. There are more than a hectare of olive trees and a farm. When I'm there, it takes me back to my childhood, when I fished for sea urchins on the island of Lérins with a fork or when we picked wild asparagus with my mother, in the hinterland."

Ardisson and him: "We had a lot in common"

Since we saw him four days after Thierry Ardisson's disappearance, the man in black was inevitably mentioned. Stéphane Guillon had collaborated with him for about ten years on Salut les terriens!.

"There was a break at one point, but I consider him my big brother. We had a lot in common. We're two hypersensitive people who like to fight, who can't stand being fought. We met at the march against anti-Semitism. He accosted me: "How are you, babe?" We kissed and off we went. We understood that there were more important things."