Laetitia Casta

TCR: You were thrust into the spotlight at a very young age – as a teenager – but you have always come across as so self-assured and articulate. Did having all of these eyes on you, having to be comfort- able with being looked at, come fairly naturally to you?
LC: Well I remember on my first shoot, taking my very first picture. I didn’t know at all what it was like to be a model. I didn’t know anything about it. At that point I just thought that it was best to try and be myself because that’s all I knew. When the picture came out, I looked so much older than I actually was. I was only 16. I looked at the picture and I saw somebody that was 25, who looked so much older and more sophisticated, and I was completely shocked. That was my first contact with photography. At that time people would say that I did the best when I didn’t have makeup on, nothing. It kind of felt like the pictures were capturing some part of my soul, which felt much older. It was showing me a part of myself that I didn’t know. That’s how I started. I found it very interesting to be in front of the camera. As it went on, I could be different people, experience these different moments, like playing a character. I always felt like it was not really me. It was just part of my imagination and I could go anywhere. During the ‘90s, my teenage years, it felt like nobody really knew me. I was always going into these differ- ent characters in the world. I was always shocked to see the results. When I was looking at the picture afterwards, I saw somebody else. It was not me.

TCR: Making the transition from being a model to being an actress is not always an easy transition. For you, did it feel like a natural progression from the kind of work you’d been doing in front of cameras anyway?
LC: Well, it was natural for me, but it was not natural for the people in the business. For a model to become an actress and to be taken seriously, it was not a natural transition, not for fashion people, not for people in the cinema world. I felt like I had to climb over many walls to get there – when you are doing something that other people don’t get, don’t understand, and don’t think is possible. Other people would say it’s not possible and you just kind of have to make believe that it really is until it finally becomes reality. So yes, it was natural for me, but I felt that I have to work more and more than others to prove that I am passionate about it. Honestly, I know now that they get it, but I don’t really care. And I think I never cared about it because I had to accomplish it for myself. It was more important for me to believe in it than for others. And I never wait to have the approval of somebody else. It could be my parents, it could be anybody. No one has the authority to make me change my dreams.

TCR: Having been in the public eye for so long, did you have to be vigilant about protecting your private life, or nourishing some kind of life outside of work that no one else could see?
LC: Certainly, because from the time I am 16 years old I was working every day. At the time, I didn’t protect myself, I just jumped on it. But I learned as time went on to be more wise, that there were places I could hide. I could actually be very shy in real life, but I honestly never had much of a problem with the fame part of it. I just always felt that, at least for me, it was a part of the game. I didn’t take it too seriously, which felt like a healthy way to deal with it.