With the Home Entertainment release of THE MONUMENTS MEN on June 9th, we’ve got an exclusive chat with Jean Dujardin (who plays Jean Claude Clermont), and you’ll also know him THE ARTIST and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET – he’s a talented fella! Check it out below where he talks about his character, what he likes to indulge in and a little further insight into that upcoming George Clooney chap…
JD: My character is Jean Claude Clermont. He is the Frenchman of the team. He is an art dealer who comes from Marseilles, and who then fled to London with his family. He’s recruited by the Americans to be part of this group of experts to retrieve the artworks that were looted by the Nazis. So this is somebody who doesn’t really want to go to war, but he wants to contribute to the war effort. And he is really very proud of being part of the Monuments Men. So he was really happy to make his own contribution in his country for his country. And he’s not a soldier like most of The Monuments Men, but he is somebody who is really determined, who has a lot of courage, and he’s also naïve in a certain way. But, I think this is the team that is most important for team spirits. They also all work in the same direction for the same cause. And this is what the film is all about. It’s less about the individual characters.
Q: How does George juggle all of his different roles?
JD: I think that he is cloned, really. He is a clone, George Clooney. And unfortunately, this is the only way it can work. He has to have more than one brain. Or he’s very talented. I think it’s the third one. He is just really talented. He’s very structured in his mind. His mind is very well devised. He’s got a very structured brain, and he can really be attentive to everyone. He can look at his schedule at the same time. He can just oversee the situation. He can evaluate just everything, and it is not at all surprising because, he can do the acting, the directing at the same time. There were others before him, but I knew for him, this was going to be very smart, very clever, very interesting, and at the same time, calm and relaxed. And that we would work in mutual confidence and trust.
Q: Do you find time to watch movies when you’re traveling?
JD: Certainly not enough. But I do understand why I don’t do this. I don’t do this more than I do at the moment because I think that would be overtime when I am already starring in a film and I need some kind of a relaxing, and I don’t really want to really look at films because I always see what’s behind the scenes, and how this was made. And I like so much the acting and the actors and I would also be very influenced by them. So I’m trying to preserve my own and in life I can really learn much more through real life. For my acting, for enjoying the way of acting, and not by watching others act. So I do like actors. I also like the stories that are told by the movies. But in a film, I really look at the actors mostly. And I have the feeling of trying to steal things from them. I really don’t want to do this. I just protect myself, and this is why I watched fewer movies.
Q: And what was the atmosphere like on this film?
JD: We had moments that were really exquisite, that were team spirit moments, team building moments, and we had bad weather. We had a lot of rain, in particular, Germany. George really knew how to handle the situation. He made everybody sing, and make jokes, and, we were all on full energy. It was just raining cats and dogs. We could not really shoot the film and we were just protected by an assistant, and George was singing a song, and everybody else was joining in. This was really fun. And apart from that, I had quite a number of scenes with John Goodman, and with John, it’s a bit different, especially the language. We didn’t really talk to each other all the time, but this is somebody who’s pretty reserved, and I am also pretty introverted. So we also tried to focus a bit. We respected each other. I really liked the silent moments together with him. Sometimes when the others came on the set like Bill, you really had those plays on words. And this was also very nice.
The Monuments Men is released on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD on 9th June from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
