Benoît Magimel knew a long career in cinema. Invite you Konbini Video Club on May 2, 2026, the actor looked back on the notable films of his career and those he chose to decline. Among them, a monument of French cinema: Mesrine: The death instinct. The film by Jean-François Richet, released in 2008, was ultimately played by Vincent Cassel in a role that has become cult. But before him, it was Magimel who had been approached. At the time, he just didn’t feel right for the character. “I’m 30 years old, I weigh 64 kilos, I’m struggling to gain weight. It’s not the time for me”, a-t-il confié.
No frustration, no whim, but cold lucidity. “The others don’t understand, but I can’t be credible. I go see my friends, I look in the mirror, I say: ‘I’m not going to make it’. The voice, everything, I’m too young”he remembered. The schedule imposed by the production finally convinced him and Vincent Cassel withdrew from the project with the first director, and it was in hasty succession that the role was offered to the actor with two months to prepare. “I’m told I have to do it in two months…”he explains. A constraint that he considered unrealistic for a role of this scale.
“It can do a lot of damage” : Benoît Magimel young actor, he talks about the need to be well surrounded
In 1988, when he was only 13 years old, Benoît Magimel landed the role of Momo Groseille in Life is a long river calm by Étienne Chatiliez. In the columns of Societyin June 2025, and taken over by TV-Leisurethe actor said that he did not know if he was cut out for the acting profession when he started. “I say it to myself now, because before, I didn’t dare, it felt like ‘I’m telling myself’, but I think I was made for that, yes, from the start. Even in primary school. I had a little body expression class and I already wanted to act as a clown, to seek the light, to be loved for something. And since I saw five films every weekend“, he confided.
This May 31, in the columns of La Tribune SundayBenoît Magimel returned to his beginnings as an actorr, en expliquant la nécessité d’être “attentive” and well surrounded to hope to last. “My first agent told me that many children had a “face” at 12-13 years old but that as they grew up they did not change in a “good way” and no longer correspond, physically, to the roles of a young lead.” he remembered, before mentioning Gérald Thomassinwhose career was short. “You have to be attentive to child actors, because when you’re filming small you feel a lot of love, you’re supervised, and when that stops, there’s nothing left. The boy from the Little Criminal [Gérald Thomassin]for example: we took him out of his neighborhood, he got a Caesar and then he was left to his own devices… it can do a lot of damage“he concedes.
How did Benoît Magimel seduce Juliette Binoche to play in The Passion of Dodin Bouffant ?
Twenty years of cordial relations, then an unexpected reunion on the set of the film The Passion of Dodin Bouffant by Tran Anh Hung, in 2024, which revived the complicity between Benoît Magimel and Juliette Binoche. On the show Tea and tea(s) on Canal+, the actor revealed, not without charm, that it was through cooking that he was able to seduce his former partner.
“If you want to make a little impact on the woman you want and love, it’s good to make a little splash”he confided, before expanding on his culinary philosophy: “I like dishes that can be simmered. Dishes that are always to be reinvented. A slow-cooked dish is better the next day. Two days later, there are still other flavors. It’s evolving, it’s in motion. And I like that. I like dishes that can continue to be enriched. We can choose other foods and inject them into it. I like that a lot,” he explained.. A way of cooking which ultimately resembles a way of loving.
