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Agathe Rousselle Will Blow Your Mind

Agathe Rousselle

Jumpsuit by Dsquared2. Earring (worn throughout) by Courrèges. Bracelets (worn throughout) by Clash De Cartier. Rings (worn throughout) by Juste Un Clou and Clash De Cartier. Belt by John Lobb. Shoes by Loewe.

“I didn’t have an agent. A casting director found me on Instagram,” says Agathe Rousselle about the casting process for Titane. “They didn’t tell me much about the film at the audition. I knew it had something to do with gender, which I was familiar with, since I’ve always been mistaken for boys and men. I also knew it was going to be super physical, but I’ve been exercising my whole life. I felt like I could be a machine.”

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I always felt displaced in life, like I was on the outside, and I did many things because I was just trying to find a way to express myself,” says the 33-year-old Parisian, who has dabbled in photography, poetry, and running a feminist zine. “Being on a movie set was the first time I felt artistically complete.”

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“I couldn’t relate to my character at all, which is a good thing, because she’s a psychopath,” Rousselle says of Alexia, the serial killer with a fetish for metal that she plays in Titane. “I loved that this role had nothing to do with me. That’s what an actor is supposed to do, right? Go into someone else’s skin.”

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“I gave everything to Julia Ducournau,” she says of Titane’s director, whose first film was the cannibal coming-of-age horror movie Raw. “Doing what I’m doing in the movie without trust in my director would have been a nightmare. I could not have gone that far. Basically my body, even almost my psyche, didn’t belong to me for two months.”

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“It’s something to fulfill one’s dream, but to fulfill a dream to that level is a lot,” Rousselle says of the night Titane won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. “I’m happy the award ceremony was documented so there’s proof that it actually happened. Otherwise it would feel like a dream.”

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Hair: Alexandry Costa at Artlist.

Makeup: Anthony Preel at Artlist.

Set Design: Henri Lecluse.

Production: Kitten Production.

Manicure: Julie Villanova at Artlist.

Photography Assistants: Dani Bastidas and Valentine Lacoui.

Fashion Assistants: Aline Mia Kaestli and Salomé Rouquet.