"I'm taking it, I live much better with it!": Pierre Arditi, delighted to receive a Crystal Nymph this Friday evening at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival

A few hours before landing on stage at the Grimaldi Forum to receive a Crystal Nymph for his lifetime achievement on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the 64th Monte-Carlo Television Festival this Friday, Pierre Arditi welcomed us in a relaxed atmosphere at the Monte-Carlo Bay. Sweltering heat, blue sea, and apparent calm, the Rock was preparing to celebrate the stars of the small screen until June 17. Pierre Arditi, an iconic figure of the seventh art, theater, and television, was not hiding his pleasure before being honored. Few can lean on the holy trinity of awards: 7 d'Or, César, and Molière. Pierre Arditi can even boast of adding the Crystal Nymph to the mix.

A remarkable and acclaimed voice (he recently dubbed Robert De Niro in the Netflix series Zero Day ), an actor capable of portraying Georges Clemenceau, Bonaparte, or Condorcet, but also very loyal to certain directors like Josée Dayan, Arditi is a mountain. A workaholic and project-driven man, it took a small miracle to fit this Monaco escapade into his ministerial schedule.

How do you feel before receiving this Crystal Nymph?

There are two categories of people. Those who consider it to be of no importance, who don't care, who brush it off with a wave of the hand. There is a second category of people, to which I belong, who are very touched and very honored to receive recognition, sometimes from the public, sometimes from people in my profession, as is the case here, or from people who let me know that after all, whatever my age, I can still be worth something and speak to the people of my time. And that is a precious gift. There is no age to enjoy the recognition of others. There are people, moreover, who will never have it. That's their problem, too bad for them. But I take the Crystal Nymph. We can live without it, but personally, I live much better with it.

You have a 60-year career, does that make you dizzy sometimes?

At my age, which is quite old now, what interests me is the future. I can't be a discovery for most people who know me very well, but I can still discover things I haven't done yet. I don't know if I manage to surprise myself, but I know that I do everything I can to surprise others. There's no point in taking life seriously, since in any case, it's an adventure from which you don't emerge alive. So, while we're at it, we might as well take advantage of the fact that we're still here before disappearing. That's why this Crystal Nymph touches me. It makes me happy to see that a certain number of people, especially people in my profession, in my line of work, recognize me as one of their own. There, I've devoted my life to that. It's not bad not to be excluded from the family.

You are one of the few who have never differentiated between theater, cinema and television, why?

I even did television at a time when it wasn't chic to do it. Not at all, in fact. I did it long before that, and I'm glad I did. My first television appearance was in 1966, I was 22, it was François Gir's The 99th Minute . At the time, it wasn't fashionable. You had to do theater or cinema. Cinema, actually. I started learning my craft that way, and I've never regretted it.

What also marks your career is your loyalty: Josée Dayan, Alain Resnais, Bernard Murat, etc.

It's crucial, because they're companions. These are people who accompany your life. First, because they're discovering you. It interests them, and so they want to continue discovering you. You want to help them discover parts of yourself that you didn't know yet. So, we keep each other warm between people who love each other. It's a profession where we mask a false sympathy more or less correctly. But it's a profession where there are sometimes partners, partnerships of great loyalty, who generally accompany you until the end.