Anne Richard

My work involves passing on emotions, providing entertainment, allowing people to dream and moving my audience. I’m an actor working in Paris.

My passion is people. In each film or play, I get to take on a different role. I can dive into that character’s universe, find out what they represent, try and understand them as best I can, and make them and their way of thinking as real as possible. And that enables me to explore human nature ! It’s really fascinating. If you have 100 roles, you have 100 different sides of human nature to explore. But I also really love entertaining people, moving them, offering them a moment of happiness and making them want to come back every evening to the theatre, their TV set or the cinema.

My career path. It all started with my parents. My mother got me into acting in front of the Christmas tree when I was seven or eight, or maybe even younger. She wrote little plays that I put on at school. And later on, my parents encouraged me to go to Paris and they have always supported me. My brother also played a key role. We started out together. But he had a different passion and went into something else – he wanted to be a radio reporter.

And then the director Jacques Malaterre offered me my first leading TV roles. We’ve made nine films together, including the start of the Boulevard du Palais series.

A downside or obstacle ? The downside in this job is that it’s difficult to find work ; it’s irregular and intermittent. You always have to be looking for new roles and for more work. And in France, who you know is very important. We almost have two jobs – you’re an actor and your own salesperson ! And you get the feeling that you’re starting from scratch each time, which I find particularly hard. What’s more, there’s no shortage of actresses – I’d even say there are too many because there are often more roles for men than for women.

I’m proud that I’ve managed to make my childhood dream come true and become an actor in Paris, and that I get to entertain people. When I’m out and people recognize me and say “Oh, we loved you in that, thank you !” that gives purpose to my life and the choices I’ve made.