“Sexuality? I caught her with a girl. And I’m attracted to the feminine side of men»- Corriere.it

Laetitia Casta tomorrow at the Spoleto Festival, directed by Safy Nebbou, brings a legend of the piano, «Clara Haskil», the story of the Romanian musician who died in 1960. A difficult, tumultuous life, told from the prelude of her existence to the final fugue.

Why this story?
“I knew nothing about her, I’d never heard of her. You had a destiny full of fragility, an extraordinary sensitivity. She had stage fright and only had worldwide success in her last few years. She was on the run from Nazism, she had back problems, they applied a brace with a trauma that never left her. As a child in Bucharest, she had a naive and joyful childhood. Then…”.

Then?
“His house burned down and his father, who jumped into the flames to save his little sister, died of his wounds. Clara grew up with her father’s brother, a strict man who sent her to the Conservatory but kept her in her house as in prison. I identified with her, with her soul.’

And she plays fifteen characters…
«Otre to Clara, her family, the violinist Arthur Grumiaux, the pianist Dinu Lipatti and Chaplin, of whom Clara was a friend».

She speaks Italian well.
«I was very attached to my grandmother who was from your country, Zelinda. As a teenager, I entered a beauty contest to please her. Up to 12 years I lived in Normandy, where I was born, then we moved to the suburbs of Paris, in a small village immersed in a forest. My father was a builder, my mother worked in accounting for a company. I was a very shy girl, I didn’t talk to anyone about the contest. But the news came out, my friends from school started teasing me, because she won and not usthey said. I didn’t understand why boys, when I was 13, began to look at me, I thought I had who knows what defects».

But how was his adolescence in the woods?
«My toys were flowers, plants, trees. I had a goose that I followed everywhere. My upbringing in nature was a gift.”

And the cinema?
“The first film I saw was Rambo with Sylvester Stallone. I was six years old and I wanted at all costs to become like him, my hero».

Is he making movies?
“Three. The first, by director Vanessa Filho, on the writer Gabriel Matzneff who at the age of 45 had a love affair with a 14-year-old minor. I am the mother of the little girl. Matzneff lives in France, it is still a scandal today. In the second, Happiness is for tomorrow I’m a woman who will do anything to get her man out of jail, that’s a fact too. The third movie, A black storyis Italian, the director is Leonardo Agostini and it is about feminicides, there I am a wife who suffers everything from her husband ».

Is there a plague of feminicides in France too?
“As in Italy. Luckily we women have achieved something, at 45 I am still a model and no one is surprised ».

She has four children.

«The oldest is 22 and went to live alone in Milan, the youngest is 2. People read it in magazines and ask me, but how do you work and have four children? They look at me like a Martian. I reply, why don’t you ask men the same question? Do you want to know what mother I am? A free woman and my children see it every day. I am horrified by the stereotype of the perfect mother, the clichés: I am attracted to the feminine side of men».

And what is the feminine side of her husband Louis Garrel?
She smiles: «Ah, you have to ask him that».

Is it true that you like to wear men’s clothes?
“I find the tuxedo sexy. My mother always wanted me pretty, so to rebel I put pants under her skirt. A person is complex. I’ve never fallen in love with a woman, but the discovery of sexuality happened with a girl. It was like when you play doctor and nurse. Today there is a new generation that is deeper and freer. You love the soul, not the fact of being a man or a woman.”