Marion Cotillard on leaving the character of Piaf

Even the greatest actors admit it: leaving a role can be hard. You can experience post-show blues or post-performance stress. Actually, the better the performance, the harder it seems...

Here is what Marion Cotillard, Academy Award Winner 2008 (Best Actress in a Leading Role for "La Vie En Rose") says about her experience with the role of Edith Piaf:

TELERAMA INTERVIEW 1/31/2007

“ It was about letting this moment happen when the character appears. I do not know how to explain this process; that we are going to feel a person, a presence, inside of ourselves. I let myself be taken by something, not to say someone… The idea was to try not to control anything: by controlling the smallest intonation, I was afraid to take away the life of the character, and to deprive myself from pleasure.
[...] On the second day of the film shoot, I heard this voice coming out of me. It wasn’t my voice! What a shock! It was more than a voice actually: I felt in my body, the walk of Edith Piaf. It was almost mystical: the moment I had seen her, Piaf almost never let go of me again. It is not about being possessed, it is more about the feeling of being inhabited.”


LE MONDE INTERVIEW 2/3/2007

At one point though, I will have to leave Piaf.
I seemed so obvious to me before the shooting and it is so hard today. I am going through a time of mourning; I feel that I am seeing her every day; that I go to places haunted by her without knowing it. Now, I will have to take back my place within my whole body.