Below is a short article on Olivier Martinez's status in France.
Originally in French; to see original version, click here.
Comments in [ ]'s are my remarks.
----------
The Horseman of the Cinema
By Vincy Thomas
Too handsome? Too much of a hunk? French cinema has never liked "pretty boys" and has never known what to do with those like Martinez -- an athlete's body, with sex appeal. That kind of thing doesn't work well in melodramas, dramas, or complex, intellectual movies. And heros? Out of style.... All this is perhaps what explains, on the one hand, the Spanish exile of his career [the fact that he's shot several films with Spanish directors; Chambermaid on the Titanic=Spanish director; La Ciudad de los Prodigios=Spanish-language film; Toreros=Spanish director], and on the other, his failure to rise to the top.
Olivier Martinez, after a couple of stints on TV, was revealed to us by Beinex [director of IP5], and Montand's [Yves; IP5 was his last movie] posthumous [...] movie. At this point he'll carry around that image of a rebel from the wrong side of the tracks, the tough guy on the motorcycle, replete with leather jacket and a somber stare. Imagination has its limits, it seems. Blier offers him two successive roles in his films with [actress Anouk] Grinberg. He uses him as a masculine icon, the man of women's dreams. This romantic image will seduce Rappeneau [director of The Horseman on the Roof]. In '95, the most successful French filmmaker, the director of Sauvage and Cyrano de Bergerac, casts him with Binoche in the adaptation of Giono's novel. It's a romanesque super-production shot against provençal backdrops, and the couple grace numerous magazine covers, go around the world to promote the movie, and incite numerous rumors and speculation. But after all this, the film is only a moderate success. And what should have made him a star only puts his career at a standstill. Some say that his that his shoulders, large as they were, were not big enough to support a film on his name alone. Others say that a handsome actor does not necessarily make a good actor. Martinez, with his ardor and his passion, doesn't make any changes, doesn't try comedy or action, and continues to follow his own path: drama, preferably romantic, and why not Spanish... a return to his roots. He doesn't do many films: he lies with Bigas Luna [director of The Chambermaid.], he keeps quiet with Alain Robak [director of La Taule]. Whether in the city of marvels [reference to La Ciudad de los Prodigios], telling the story of the Titanic, or in the slammer [reference to La Taule, in which he portrays an inmate], Martinez, still young, but a little more mature, with his leading-man looks, is a true "brut de fabergé" type [men's cologne; making reference to very masculine image].
Both model and vagabond, tough yet seductive, a charismatic force, yet far from being a star.
Is there no producer or director who could imagine someone as good-looking as Martinez portraying an average, everyday man?
He's been christened the "French Brad Pitt" in America. And still Olivier Martinez, while never doing a bad movie, and even taking risks, hasn't yet attained superstardom. All while having all the qualities of a star... isn't that right Mira Sorvino?