In her teenage bedroom, in the Halles district of Paris, her posters already demonstrated a certain eclecticism: the Charmed series, the players from the 2006 World Cup (“I was very in love with Thierry Henry”), the film OSS 117, a campaign poster by Ségolène Royal (“complete fan!”). While her lifelong friend, the actress Rebecca Marder, with whom she worked on short films, was already casting for castings, Suzanne de Baecque waited until she was 18 before trying her hand at it. “It took me a while to take the plunge, but I never thought of another job,” she assures. After a while, I felt that I wasn’t going to be spotted in the canteen like Vincent Lacoste… So I signed up for the free class at Cours Florent: I was in the right place. »
Classes and a diploma from the Théâtre du Nord school in Lille behind her, here she is an actress. At 28, she appeared, a tall silhouette with swirling candour, in the theater with Alain Françon or Guillaume Vincent. Cinema – the field of research of his father, Antoine de Baecque, historian, critic and collaborator of the “World of Books”, while his mother, an academic, explored literature – has so far only offered him fleeting appearances with François Ozon (My crime), Maïwenn (Jeanne du Barry) or Katell Quillévéré (Le Temps d’aimer). A spicy supporting role as a dental assistant at the end of her rope in Iris and the Men, a comedy with Laure Calamy released in January, changed the situation a little.
Conflicting injunctions
It’s yet another “Suzy de Baecque”, as she calls herself, who is performing in Tenir Debout, her creation at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers, from February 29 to March 4. In 2020, pushed to imagine an end-of-studies creation, she applied for Miss Poitou-Charentes – region, she explains with a laugh, chosen not out of passion for “Ségolène”, who chaired it from 2004 to 2014, but for his family ties. She complies with everything. “The application file where you are asked both the color of your eyes and your ambition in life”, the photo shoot in a local beauty style, the lessons on smiles, the taking of measurements, the parades in swimsuits in front of the local notables, “almost just guys, one of whom openly whistled at me”…
Eliminated before the coronation, she retains “the banality of violence” and the contradictory injunctions: “to be attractive but not vulgar, neither too seductive nor too prudish”. A handful of other candidates contacted by Instagram confided in her. From these outpourings, she drew the text of the piece. “I realized to what extent Miss was the typical young girl onto whom all popular fantasies are projected,” explains Suzanne de Baecque, who performs Tenir erect alongside Raphaëlle Rousseau, actress and director who devoted a solo play on stage by actress Delphine Seyrig, Discussion with DS, in 2022.
This failed competition helped her “get rid of [her] complexes”. “This competition was also, in a way, a lesson in acting,” she says. Whereas, when I was younger, I thought I had to constantly emphasize my weirdness, my singularity, I learned through all that to simply trust myself, to take responsibility for myself more. » After another trip to the cinema in the coming months, under the direction of the Larrieu brothers whose fantasy she venerates, she would like to try “a more cerebral girl role”, a territory that she has little explored so far.
