{"id":543075,"date":"2026-06-19T07:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/543075\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T07:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T07:00:13","slug":"i-was-so-welcomed-in-france-i-think-its-because-i-have-the-nose-of-a-frenchman-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/543075\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I was so welcomed in France. I think it\u2019s because I have the nose of a Frenchman\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Th\u00e9odore Pellerin<\/a>, a young actor whose name you need to know, is currently at home in the great city of Montreal. <\/p>\n

This is worth noting, as, always crossing oceans, he is the exemplar of an international actor. He has been in American films such as Boy Erased<\/a> and Beau Is Afraid<\/a>. He has worked at home in projects such as Sophie Dupuis\u2019s Solo and Xavier Dolan\u2019s It\u2019s Only the End of the World<\/a>. He is in French films such as Continental Drift and the excellent, imminent Nino.<\/p>\n

Now 29, he must occasionally wonder where is best to lay his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWherever you live, you\u2019re always shooting elsewhere,\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter where you live. People live in LA, but no one shoots in LA. People live in Paris, but no one really shoots in Paris. So it doesn\u2019t really matter. And Montreal is kind of between the States and France in a way. And it\u2019s home. It\u2019s where my parents are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sleek of aspect, Pellerin has, over the past decade, proved a versatile performer. This month we see him in Pauline Loqu\u00e8s\u2019s Nino as a young Frenchman reeling from a recent diagnosis of throat cancer. It is a serious film but not a depressing one. The titular character, bumping about Paris in the days before his chemotherapy begins, seems impressively calm on the outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s calm,\u201d Pellerin says, disagreeing. \u201cI think he\u2019s already falling apart. I think it\u2019s subtle. People can have very different interpretations and feelings watching the film. And that\u2019s great. But to me it\u2019s someone who\u2019s already thinking a lot about his own death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nino premiered to great acclaim in the Critics\u2019 Week strand of Cannes last year. Pellerin won the Louis Roederer Foundation rising-star award in that section, and the film went on to secure four nominations at the 51st C\u00e9sar Awards (the \u201cFrench Oscars\u201d), taking best first feature and, for Pellerin, \u201cbest male revelation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole Nino journey was such a happy one,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was such a beautiful one. All the steps were beautiful from the first time I read the script. From the audition to the meeting with Pauline, and then waiting some months and years for the film to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talk to me as if I am an idiot about the challenges, as someone from a Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois background, of playing roles in French films. Was he welcomed into the French industry?<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so welcomed,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it\u2019s because I have the nose of a Frenchman. Ha ha! So they\u2019re, like, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s one of us.\u2019 I mean \u2026 literally!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThéodoreTh\u00e9odore Pellerin in Nino <\/p>\n

He agrees that Critics\u2019 Week, centred a few hundred metres down the Croisette from the Palais des Festivals, is the perfect place to premiere such an intimate film. He enjoyed the experience sufficiently to serve on the Critics\u2019 Week jury at this year\u2019s event. He would have seen Alexander Murphy\u2019s Tin Castle<\/a>, the moving Irish documentary about an Irish Traveller family, among the selection.<\/p>\n

\u201cA beautiful film,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought it was great. I wasn\u2019t really aware of the Travellers. So they were new characters for me \u2013 and a new reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let us spool back to the start of his career. Pellerin was born in 1997, the son of Denis Pellerin, a painter, and Marie Chouinard, a distinguished dancer and choreographer. One assumes such artistically inclined parents were content with their son drifting into the world of acting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think they were that worried,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were in Quebec. It\u2019s not a very toxic industry, and also my parents are not in the TV or film industry at all. I have a friend who\u2019s a casting director whose kid would like to become an actress, and she\u2019s, like, \u2018Oh no, how terrible! It\u2019s so hard.\u2019 My parents never had that perspective on things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Would it be mad to suggest that it was an advantage to be raised in Quebec? That opened up an array of markets to the young actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it feels like a privilege,\u201d he says. \u201cI wanted to be able to work around and not feel like I was belonging to a place and an industry. Because that\u2019s where it becomes a bit annoying. I want to be outside all that and just focus on individual projects.\u201d<\/p>\n

He genuinely seems to have satisfied that ambition over the past few years. He had a lead role opposite Kirsten Dunst in the TV series On Becoming a God in Central Florida. Alex Russell\u2019s Lurker, in which he stars as a charismatic stalker, was a smash at Sundance in 2025 and ultimately scored Pellerin a best-actor nomination at the Independent Spirit Awards. In short, few actors of his age are so perfectly poised for a significant breakthrough. He is good looking. He has the acting chops. <\/p>\n

\"OnOn Becoming a God in Central Florida: Th\u00e9odore Pellerin and Kirsten Dunst. Photograph: Showtime <\/p>\n

Next up he joins the ensemble cast of Tom Ford\u2019s take on Anne Rice\u2019s 1982 novel Cry to Heaven. Focusing on the lives of castrati in 18th-century Italy, the film has been much pencilled in for a possible premiere at Venice International Film Festival in September.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anything,\u201d he says diplomatically. \u201cIt might take a while for the movie to be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

What a cast: Nicholas Hoult, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ciar\u00e1n Hinds, Colin Firth, Owen Cooper, Hunter Schafer, Adele. Tom Ford, fashion designer, is back behind the camera for the first time in a decade. It sounds like a lavish experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was. I quite loved it,\u201d he says. \u201cWe were shooting in Rome and in Naples a little bit. I loved Tom. I thought he was so elegant in the way he shows up, but also with his warmth. He\u2019s very surprisingly warm and tender. I had scenes with Adele, who\u2019s extraordinary, and with Owen Cooper, and with George MacKay. A lot of great, great people. I think it\u2019s going to be a beautiful film.\u201d<\/p>\n

He sounds positively buoyant in his enthusiasm. With some justice. Note the name. Note the nose.<\/p>\n

Nino is in cinemas from Friday, June 19th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Th\u00e9odore Pellerin, a young actor whose name you need to know, is currently at home in the great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[22713,71542,11519,434,137425,53531,18,117,69611,19,17,16851,45010,233021,40370],"class_list":["post-543075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-aaron-taylor-johnson","tag-adele","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-celebrities","tag-ciaran-hinds","tag-colin-firth","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-george-mackay","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kirsten-dunst","tag-nicholas-hoult","tag-theodore-pellerin","tag-tom-ford"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}