What makes Duris more than just a handsome face, though, is his unique combination of swaggering, feral intensity and pulsating vulnerability. These qualities have been on vivid display in the acclaimed and varied roles he’s played in recent years; the sleazy gangster with a yen to be a concert pianist in “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,’’ a dancer saddled with a life-threatening heart condition in “Paris,’’ a callow student coming out of his shell in “L’auberge Espagnole’’ (“The Spanish Apartment’’), and a depressed, jilted lover in “In Paris.’’
During a recent interview to promote his just-opened film, the easygoing French romantic comedy “Heartbreaker,’’ Duris seems aware of his own ascending star, even if he’s puzzled by his sex-symbol status and all the critical attention that’s been lavished on him in recent years. At one point, the actor bounds into the hotel suite and blurts out playfully, “Oh, my God! It’s the movie star!’’
He knows how ridiculous that sounds, especially in Manhattan. While 36-year-old Duris is famous in his native country, his name and face still elicit blank stares from the average American moviegoer. Most don’t know that “Heartbreaker’’ was a major hit this summer in France, and an American remake is in the works. Only a small percentage have seen him in a steady stream of French-language films that have crossed over to art-house acclaim in the United States.
But now Duris appears poised to land a breakthrough role on this side of the pond, following in the recent footsteps of countrymen Vincent Cassel, Gaspard Ulliel, and Mathieu Amalric. Just a few years ago, Duris was being pursued to play a Bond villain in “Casino Royale,’’ but he was forced to decline due to a scheduling conflict. The question at this point seems to be not if, but when he’ll be asked again.
In person, Duris evinces the same blend of heart-skipping charisma, live-wire spirit, and pensiveness that is a hallmark of his most memorable characters. Despite his sanguine demeanor, the actor admits to self-doubt — a quality he says he shares with Alex, his character in “Heartbreaker.’’ A professional Don Juan, the smooth-talking Alex secretly breaks up couples by helping women find the inner confidence to end their unhappy relationships. Alex’s weapons of choice in this business venture include his brooding good looks, killer charm, and irresistible powers of seduction. While Duris denies a Casanova aspect to his personality, he acknowledges his love of “playing with situations, with a way of seducing.’’
“Alex is a player. But he has doubts at the same time,’’ says Duris, who speaks in a mix of English and French, using a translator. “I think when he tries to seduce someone, to do his job, he gets totally into it, and he believes 100 percent in what he has to do. But after that he stops and maybe has a lot of doubts about what he did. So I think that could be me, in a sense.’’
Professionally, those nagging self-doubts are sometimes inhibiting, Duris says, but they can also fuel him to go farther or deeper with a character or push a scene to another level.
“The doubts give you a way of thinking about other things,’’ he says. “It feeds the character because the doubts that you might have when you’re acting in one scene, they can serve you in your acting three days later in another scene. So they can feed the character and make the performance richer.’’
Duris says that dynamic existed on “Heartbreaker.’’ In this stylish and elegant romantic comedy, Alex gets hired by the wealthy father of the beautiful Juliette (Vanessa Paradis, the longtime partner of Johnny Depp) to stop her from getting married. Only there’s a small problem: Juliette appears to be in a picture-perfect relationship with the dashing, successful, and benevolent man of her dreams, Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln). Alex’s sister Melanie (Julie Ferrier) and her husband, Marc (François Damiens), are his co-conspirators in this enterprise, fueled by songs and choreography from “Dirty Dancing.’’
When director Pascal Chaumeil approached Duris with the part, the actor was resistant to the idea of doing a conventional romantic comedy and skeptical of the script’s heavy-handed humor. But the two continued to discuss the film and worked on adjustments to the script with co-screenwriter Laurent Zeitoun.
Duris overcame his reticence, he says, through “coming to understand who Pascal was and the way he wanted to do this movie, and to see that he was open to discussion and to changing and adding some stuff to the script. I had to understand his sense of humor, and I had to trust him.’’
Chaumeil, who was directing his first feature, praises Duris as an actor of uncommon depth and electric energy.
“You never see him acting. He really seems to be real when he plays [a character],’’ says Chaumeil. “And the camera loves him. He has a kind of elegance, but he’s intense; he has a lot of tension, and it matches the style of the film. And Romain plays that very well — the way he walks, the way he comes into a room. He has this thing where his energy goes right into the camera.’’
Duris also has an enigmatic quality that keeps you wondering about his characters’ true intentions. “You see Romain as his character on the screen, and you don’t know exactly who this guy is, you don’t know exactly what he’s thinking,’’ says Chaumeil. “He makes you guess things. He has a mystery about him.’’
While Duris seems like a natural in front of the camera, he says that acting was an unlikely career pursuit for him. When he was 18, he was studying painting and playing drums in a band when he was spied on the street by a casting agent and persuaded to take a screen test for director Cédric Klapisch. At first reluctant, he eventually agreed to act in Klapisch’s “Le péril jeune’’ (“Good Old Daze’’). The two have since collaborated on five more films.
However, Duris is averse to talking or thinking too much about his career path.“This job is crazy. You are an actor only when you’re playing, and it could all end tomorrow. So I don’t like to speak about [my] career in an organized way. I’m more spontaneous. The way I choose my films, I think maybe my heart is choosing for me,’’ he says.
A sense of mystery is important both in the way he thinks about his career and what happens on set. While he acknowledges bringing himself to every part he plays, he avoids analyzing his performances or exploring what aspects of a character are drawn from his own personality.
“I don’t want to feel that when I’m acting, especially when it comes to emotions,’’ he says. “I don’t want it to be a store of emotion. Like, ‘OK, come on guys. . . . You want some crying? OK, I’m going to cry now. You want some joy? . . .’ I know there is a lot of method [to acting], but I don’t have my own method.’’
Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at chriswallenberg@gmail.com.