It has no difficulty imagining it aged 14 at the controls of the organ of Saint-Pierre de Neuilly to make pocket money. “The burials were more generous than weddings,” he said, sixty years later.
At the same time, he published “The Vilain Petit Duck” to tell the gossip of the Pasteur high school – “Flirting, boom stories, cheating” – that he sold 50 cents … Here are two lighting anecdotes on the funny bird that is Olivier Lejeune, 74, and the spirit always as malicious.
Small glasses and well -combed hair, always well put, a natural courtesy and distinction, it would be given the good god without confession. And again while he receives us in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), in his office and foot on Paris for several decades.
All summer in the already theater with the play “Encouncing”
Humorist and actor, author and theater director, inventor of TV and Plateau games, a lecturer on memory, that he has an elephant, we meet him on the occasion of “Encouncing Encucle”, his play which resumes all summer at already with already with Julie Arnold, in particular.
His very first play created in 2003 and which was a crazy success. “I was very lucky with my first times, maybe not the first time I made love, I was zero,” he pouffed. But my first 45 laps Pot for laughterwith Patrick Green sold more than 2 million copies, the first piece was an absolute card, my first board game, The President’s Gametoo, ”he rejoices.
“I had always wanted to write for the theater, but since the age of 18, all my creative energy has been sucked in by others,” he said.
“Very quickly I was lucky to write sketches, to be successful and to earn a living”
“I wrote a lot for TV, sketches, sitcoms, The little Bouvard theater, Top Club the guy lux, The class For 7 years, details the Swiss knife of the profession. After three months, the recurring had emptied their stock of sketches, big hard worker, I wrote for them. ” And played everything at the same time.
On the walls, half a century career is posted by dozens, supervised articles and other memories …
From boulevard, many – “Dive me”, “dream vacation”, with Marthe Mercadier, “Pipole press”, “My wife is crazy” – but not only.
Here, “The Misanthrope”, by Molière “,” Le Mariage de Figaro “, de Beaumarchais, or even” Intermezzo “, by Jean Giraudoux, staging at the Célestins, in Lyon, by Jean Meyer, pupil of Louis Jouvet who was his teacher on rue Blanche. This is where Lejeune rubbed shoulders with Isabelle Huppert, Francis Perrin, Bernard Giraudeau or Sabine Azéma.
Before that, at 17, he featured “the Apollo de Bellac”, by Jean Giraudoux, at the Lycée Pasteur theater club with Gérard Jugnot, Michel Blanc, Thierry Lhermitte, Christian Clavier … Le Splendid! “I see Jugnot tell me Come with us, we’re going to have a cafe-theater, what are you going to be pissed off in these national schools ”, he blows.
A regret to have missed this turn? “A little, yes, I would have a completely different career,” he smiles. But very quickly I was lucky to write sketches, have success and earn a living. ”
“I directed imaginary orchestras at home”
Voluble and sparkling eye, he rewinds the thread of his life. He, originally, hesitated with a career as a conductor, practicing the piano of the hours for Petit. “I was reading in the seven keys, I headed me imaginary orchestras,” he recalls.
It is for the beautiful eyes of Béatrice Agenin – “I was madly in love, she will leave me for Dussollier” – that he presents herself on the rue Blanche. Because his father, a senior official, also intimate to him to make a big school, even to become an actor … He will be, in the young fanciful, but not only.
The man has always had several fires in fire. And in 1974, at 23, he wrote for a chansonnier competition “Pot to Laughter”, success is dazzling!
“Good student”, he takes his lessons during the day and multiplies the galas in the evening, largely earning his life. Cut, he wrote soon for TV, Luron, Bouvard, Guy Lux too, for whom he will later create “intervilles” mechanisms. The opportunity to slip: “It hurts to see what is Intervilles Today, Claude Savarit’s rant is justified, it has nothing to do with it. ”
In short, it works for the young Olivier. He went to the Conservatory in Jaguar, smokes chair bars, which guns his throat to him and earned him some operations and a sliced and weakened voice. It also torches the game.
“I lost all the money I won at the casino”
“I lost all the money that I had won at the casino, I asked to be banned but I disguised myself with false mustaches by pricking the identity card of friends to go”.
“I was sick, really, life and money no longer imported, I had to play, I was like a drug addict …”. If he calmed down, it is by organizing at home … Casino evenings! Rue Condorcet, in Paris, every Friday.
“We were 50, 60, the whole job knew that there was a clandestine tripot at home, there were the companions of the song, Daniel Auteuil,” he ignites. There (he shows a table), it was the baccara, I had a real blackjack table, a roulette, mother -of -pearl tokens in my name. ”
“Okay, I was hit on the fingers by the game brigade, they told me MOnsieur Lejeune, we didn’t say anything but … It was in the early 1980s.
“For two years, I only lived thanks to the game,” he recalls. At one point, I saw myself well professional player. I made big poker games with Christophe, Eddy Mitchell. I bought myself a boat with the poker, which I called Poker ». He always has a boat, on the side of La Baule. “The sea is the only place where I do not feel guilty not to work.”
What saves him perfectly, “It’s Apple’s first 128k! Writing was a game with the computer, I could play, change the spaces of space, it gave me the taste for writing. ”
A writing of which he gratifies which asks him, without ceasing to tread the boards, him, the first prize of comedy. If it is sometimes seen, in “Rabbi Jacob” or lately in “Edmond”, it is a lot present on the screen, the trajectory will have been different …
“Most who became very great … knew how to surround themselves, I was one of those around …”
“If I had to summarize my life, I can not find myself gifted than certain friends, but I had a less career … (he is looking for his word, does not find). I think most of them who have become very large were more turned towards themselves, knew how to surround themselves, I was one of those around, but I don’t regret anything. I worked a lot below, my defect is that I never knew how to say no. Now yes, time becomes a too precious commodity, I may have no more good years to live. ”
So he writes his tenth play and he plays, alternating at the moment with four shows, “Monsieur Chasse”, by Feydeau, with Jean-Pierre Castaldi, “60 days in prison”, according to the story by Sacha Guitry of his misadventures at the Liberation, his only one on stage “Better to laugh” … and of course “all rocking” in which a man is stuck between the one he marries and his mistress … He smiles. “With the authors of Boulevard, we sometimes wonder what is real … There are quite a few. We learn to juggle life, ”says the one who has not always been faithful.
“When you love life …,” he continues, evasive. For a moment, when my wife looked at my posters, she was looking for the name of my mistress … But I still calmed down, he recovered. From a certain age, adultery is a miracle ”.
His appetite for life is intact. “And phenomenal!” ». Father three times, grandfather six times – the last little child has two months, the oldest 19 – he displays the “joy of the patriarch” to bring his tribe together.
But do not think a second of hanging up and stop running the roads and scenes of France. “Not at all, far from it. My engine? Passion. I like people, I am very curious about people and I like to discover ”. He thinks. “I have only one regret, I would have liked to achieve like some of my friends from the Lycée Pasteur, to make a comedy. But why not, it’s not over … “.
“Everything changes”, Until August 24 at the already theater in Paris (III), from Thursday to Sunday, from 19 to 39 euros.
