Icon of cinema of the 70s and the New Wave, Macha Méril has had a thousand lives. Emotionally, she also experienced many turpitudes and a particularly astonishing story with the composer Michel Legrand. She opened up about it to Frédéric Lopez in A Sunday in the Country this March 24.
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In his show A Sunday in the Country broadcast on Sunday March 24, Frédéric Lopez received the comedian Anthony Kavanagh, the singer and writer Olivia Ruiz as well as the actress Macha Méril. This was not short of revelations. After revealing that she lost her father when she was a child, that she lived in “deprivation” and that she replaced Brigitte Bardot when she was pregnant, the actress agreed to return at length on her love story with Michel Legrand. From their meeting to their marriage until her death, Macha Méril made surprising revelations.
A Sunday in the countryside: Macha Méril reveals that she first had a platonic love affair with Michel Legrand
For the actress and the composer it all began when Macha Méril met Michel Legrand in Rio when she was only 24 years old. “Michel presented The Umbrellas of Cherbourg which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and I presented another film called Adorable Mensee. And… love at first sight, great love” reveals the actress with a big sigh . “I remember, at one point, he put his hand and I put my hand on his. That was the only sexual thing that happened between us. He was married with two children including one at a young age and he said to me: ‘I can’t'” she says before adding: “We swore not to look for each other”.
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50 years after their meeting, Macha Méril tells behind the scenes of her reunion with Michel Legrand in A Sunday in the Country
In 2013, separated from his wife, Michel Legrand came to see Macha Méril perform the play Intimate Report. Although they haven’t seen each other for 50 years, they both have dinner together that same evening… And the magic happens. Asked by the host of France 2 to know why this love was stronger than all the others, Macha Méril replied “I am him and he is me. He wanted my happiness more than his and I his more than mine. It’s beyond what a couple can do” before explaining how complicated it was to live with the composer: “Everything was a nightmare. He didn’t sleep, he was difficult to feed, he He needed total darkness at night…”.
In A Sunday in the Country, Macha Méril remembers the last moments of Michel Legrand: “He did not want to stay on earth”
In 2014, Macha Méril and Michel Legrand got married. They will live many good years before the musician is overtaken by illness. “When he started to get a little weak, I understood that he didn’t want to stay on earth to be a little old man in an armchair, that didn’t interest him. He practically asked me for permission to to leave, which I gave him of course. And we lived the last moments of his life which are perhaps the most beautiful moments of my life because he took me somewhere” confides the actress before declaring : “He reconciled me with death”.
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