Amanda Lear has already had a thousand lives. Model, singer, presenter, actress, painter… Her CV is wide. From interview to interview, she constantly told herself, weaving her legend with funny, sometimes incredible, often captivating anecdotes. Ex of David Bowie or Salvador Dali or rather disco star and loudmouth of Big heads… On the general public side, everyone has their own idea about the star. “Amanda Lear is a coat rack, on which people stick all their fantasies, deplores the main interested party, that 20 minutes met at the end of May at the Hotel Meurice, in Paris. Many have not understood this complex personality, which has a lot of sensitivity, anxieties, things that she does not want to express because she is supposed to be a funny sexy. There are plenty of things people should find out. » P
During the interview, however, Amanda Lear seems to stay in her role, answering each question with humor and a touch of sarcasm. The “real” Amanda is perhaps to be discovered between the lines of an interview which rather took the form of a discussion.
You have just shot “Retirement home 2”, written by Kev Adams. It went well ?
I have four or five days of shooting left in June. The team is very friendly, we are well housed, we shoot in a magical place by the sea, in Toulon. The only thing is that there are only old people, what (laughs). There is Liliane Rovère, Marthe Villalonga, Enrico Massias. There are indeed two or three young people like Jarry and Chantal Ladesou who make me laugh or Jean Reno, very nice, who is my neighbor in Provence, but, overall, it’s mostly very old people. I didn’t know what I was going to do in this film, me. Already the title, Retirement home, it’s not even worth it… So Kev Adams explained to me that he would write me a tailor-made role, funny, quirky, not at all that of an old woman. Me, I’m more into English or American comedies. The great French comedies, Les Tuchesthe Bodin’s, Les Chevaliers du Biel for me it’s not… huh.
But do you like making movies?
People don’t always think of me for the cinema or there is a caricatural side, they see Absolutely Fabulous. It’s obviously the cougar who smokes, who drinks, who flirts with young people… It’s very nice, I could only shoot that, but it pisses me off. That’s why I accepted a tragic role in the theater, with Michel Fau, I accepted a tragic role [il y a deux ans, dans Qu’est-il arrivé à Bette Davis et Joan Crawford ?, elle incarnait la seconde]. it changed from the funny sexy Big heads. After a while it goes…
Your uniqueness is also your outspokenness…
There is something that is also very popular, the good customer who swings the floodgates, that makes people laugh. That’s also how I made my success on Italian TV. I realized that the female audience is very important, because it is the women who have the zappette. Myself, sometimes, I see one on TV, I say to myself: “She annoys me that one, I can’t see her” and hop, I zap. If you piss off the good women, they won’t look at you. So from the start, I understood that we had to create a character that they liked: a woman who says what she thinks, who doesn’t give a fuck, who pisses off the guy…
With a seductive side that they also like?
No, they dream of being like me. I see the letters I receive. They tell me that they like me, that I am elegant, that they would like me to teach them how to seduce men… They believe that everyone is at my feet. No. Unfortunately. Good women want role models. Earlier, a journalist told me that I was the symbol of today’s girls who are free, earn their own living, pay for their restaurant themselves, do what they want, dress as they want. It’s true. There has been an evolution. For me, depending on a guy is the worst! It’s humiliating, it’s appalling. Today’s women want to be independent, more aggressive, to flirt with guys… Before, we didn’t dare. I have always been rebellious. I don’t like conventions, I don’t like the bourgeoisie, I don’t like traditions.
You were just talking about your popularity in Italy. Are you appreciated there for the same reasons as in France?
In Italy I had a huge hit with the song Tomorrow (Do you want a date?) [sortie en 1977]. Silvio Berlusconi contacted me in the early 1980s and for a dozen years I was his television star. It was at the time when he was a good channel boss and didn’t play politics. Then he freaked out. So I was known as a host and singer. Berlusconi’s television was luxurious, breathtaking, with pretty dresses and wigs, it made Italians dream… It was super well paid too.
Two years ago, the Italian group Maneskin invited you to sing a duet with them at the Sanremo Festival and you refused. Do you regret having declined the offer?
Yes, that’s the kind of bullshit… It’s my fault! The Maneskins call me and ask me to sing a duet with me. I had never heard of it, so I went to Google, I saw guys all wearing makeup, I was like “oh la la what is that? I asked them for a lot of money. Obviously, they were upset, because they are very well known in Italy. So it didn’t happen. Morality, they won not only the Sanremo Festival, but also Eurovision in stride and now they are the biggest rock band in the world. My friends told me I was stupid. But I remained on good terms with them. damiano [David, le chanteur] still text me.
If Maneskin offered you this duo again, would you accept?
So I would be surprised if they asked me! I’m not nostalgic, the past, I don’t care. I don’t own any of my albums. What interests me is tomorrow: am I going to do a duet with Kanye West or I don’t know who… I want to surprise. I’m always afraid of pissing people off. You always have to arrive where you are not expected. That’s why I played Joan Crawford, why I made an album in French… If it’s to do the same thing all the time… I don’t do The Big Heads for this reason. I made them for ten years, it’s fine, we know that I know funny stories.
So that has nothing to do with the fact that Laurent Ruquier has taken over the reins of the program?
There is that too. Laurent is a friend but I am very faithful and loyal in friendship and, for me, The Big Heads, it’s Bouvard. I would if the show was called something else, The band at Ruquierfor example… But the fact that he took over the title, it’s not true, it’s not his show…
Do you think of posterity? What are you going to leave behind?
Ha ha ha. I will leave everything to my cats. Since I don’t age, I don’t think about the future at all. I live in the present. I am very curious. I think we get old when we no longer have enthusiasm and are no longer interested in anything. Having a social life is important. I live day by day. Everyone wants me. The more I say no, the more people want me. I spent years next to the phone and it never rang. And then, the minute I said I didn’t want to do anything anymore, people started calling me (laughs).
What is the craziest project you have been offered?
Fernando Arabal, a very scandalous Spanish playwright, contacted me three years ago because he had written a play called Dali vs. Picasso. He depicts them both confronting each other in front of Guernica. He wanted me to play this show in Paris. I asked if I would hold the role of Gala [Dali]. He answers me: “No, you are going to play Dali” (laughs) He wanted me to play with mustaches. It didn’t happen, but that’s to say that there are some very strange people.
You are not nostalgic, but the past has just resurfaced in your news. “Follow Me” has been given a new lease of life since Chanel chose it to dress up its “Coco Mademoiselle” perfume ad spot earlier this year. Does this new success surprise you?
I was surprised when Chanel contacted me because it’s a song I wrote forty years ago. For them, Follow Me represents the night, the mystery, the seduction… The problem is that people believe that I became a multi-billionaire with that. What they don’t know is that I have a terrible German record company that takes half of it right off the bat. The rest I share with the composers, so in the end, if I have 5,000 euros left and a Chanel bag, that’s it. The funny thing is that as the ad goes fifty times a day around the world, people are going to Shazam to find out what it is and they’re going to buy the album. There, we are at 2 million streams on Spotify, it is unexpected. I hit the charts in South Korea when it’s a forty-year-old thing and I’ve done twenty albums in the meantime. I, who want to do new things, each time I am asked to sing the same things again. When you have a tube that is stuck to you, you are a prisoner of it.
What would you like to sing?
Texts in French, by authors. Like The rumorgiven to me by Alexis Michalik [en 2016]. For me, a song is the text above all. What I didn’t like about disco was that the lyrics had no interest, it’s repetitive: “I love you baby, I love you baby, I love you baby…”, it means nothing say. The Beatles, on the other hand, for example, tell a story with every track. That’s what I love about French songs and that’s why I paid tribute to Gainsbourg, Trenet or Moustaki…
In April, you reissued your album “Let Me Entertain You”. Because our time needs lightness?
Yes, I say “Let me entertain you”. I chose this title to make it clear that we, artists, are here to entertain you from your miserable daily life, your tax bill, your gas bill, your electricity bill… Forget all that! We will make you laugh, dream, dance. It’s our job. Our role, whether in music, theater or cinema, is not to take political positions.
So when director Justine Triet receives the Palme d’Or and takes advantage of her speech to tackle the government’s attitude on pension reform or plead for the French cultural exception, you don’t like it?
This was not the place. That she makes this speech, it’s normal, I understand very well, everyone has their opinions. But let her do it at a press conference, not when we give her the Palme d’Or, when we applaud her for her film. It’s clumsy.
Do you find our times too tense?
I was 19, I believe, in May 1968. I lived in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, I was studying Fine Arts and we were setting up the barricades on Boulevard Saint-Germain with the CRS beating on us. We thought we were going to change the world: “Down with the bourgeoisie! But it didn’t work, we didn’t change it. I think it’s the same there, there are plenty of people who want to change things, environmentalists, etc. What do you want ? Unfortunately, we are forced to obey these big guys who govern us, who only do bullshit and we are nothing.
Are you resigned?
There is a resigned side. Wait, it will pass. And die. I don’t see what there is to do apart from the revolution, that’s it, well… I have an astrologer buddy who told me that the current astral configuration is the same as in 1789. It’s rather a good news. (laughs) Why not a good revolution? The king’s head will no longer be cut off because there is no longer a guillotine. It will not be the flight to Varennes, but the flight to Le Touquet. (She bursts out laughing)