An interview with Brigitte Lahaie
by Peter Blumenstock and Christian Kessler.
You began your career in the seventies as a porno actress. How did you become involved in the X-rated movie business?
Well, I was born in the north of France. My parents worked in the night-club business so we travelled a lot and moved quite often. I felt like home was a little bit of everywhere. I came to Paris when I was 18 years old and I was certainly very interested in seeing new things and this whole new amazing world. I wanted to become somebody, wanted to be rich and famous. One day I discovered in a newspaper, an advertizement looking for young women who might be interested in making movies. I saw my big chance and answered. That is how I became an X-rated movie star. I think I did my very first movie in October of 1976. After three years of doing pornographic films I decided to switch to “normal” movies and become a real actress so I stopped accepting X-roles and also took acting lessons. I enjoyed doing the X-rated films but if I look at all the terrible productions made today, I think my choice was the right one. It took about 4 years until I finally had the chance to work in a non-pornographic film and now, well, I think I’m quite famous here in France (laughs). It is funny because even today most people still know me best for my X movies. I really don’t mind my past but it is a little bit strange and quite a phenomenon. I mean, I did those movies more than 10 years ago and only for three years so I think this fame is quite obscure. Maybe one reason is the many many re-titlings and re-releases of my old pictures so my X-filmography might seem larger than it actually is. Who knows?
What do you think about the entire X-movie scene today [1993]? Most of it lacks any story or ideas, just concentrating on the act and shot on video.
I think it’s very difficult today. The people don’t want to see interesting X-movies with a plot. The entire market is full of cheap crap and really terrible productions. The society got a little bit used to pornography I think. There is no longer something special to it as there was in the early seventies where everything began here in France. Even our TV station, Canal Plus, shows once in awhile an X-movie and you can buy video tapes everywhere. It’s like going out to buy cigarettes. Pornography became a real non-artistic product which you can consume for one hour and then forget it forever. That is also why those films all look alike today.
You also started a singing career if I remember.
Not really a singing career. I just did one record in 1987. It was a really stupid song. I also did another one for Canal Plus. I interpreted famous song by Juliet Greco and that is all there is to my “singing career”. I think I am not a very good singer so probably it was best to stop before going any further in that business.
A few years ago you also wrote a book, Moi: La Scandaleuse.
Yes, that is true. I hope it will be published in one month or so. It is a novel and tells the story of a married middle-class woman who is sexually frustrated and no longer happy with her boring day to day life. One day she starts, together with her girlfriend, to work as a nude model for amateur photographers. I had the idea for this book two years ago. At the time I began writing, it was just for fun and I never thought it might be published some day.
Is this book a little bit about yourself and your past in relation to the woman’s escape from the so called “moralistic” world?
Not really. Beatrice, the leading character in my book is a completely different person than I am. I was never sexually depressed. I always lived my life the way I wanted to and always enjoyed what I did. It is mainly a story about the difficulties of being interested in sex in our society and the problems in finding the right man. Last April I also had my first experience with theater. I wrote the play by myself and about myself. I wanted to give people an inside look into the private life of a “sex-star” and show that working in this business is quite different from what many people expect it to be. The producer of the play offered my stage a revue so I am working on this project at the moment.
You worked several times for Jean Rollin and his Les raisins de la mort was one of your first non-pornographic movies. What is working with Jean Rollin like?
I think he is a very nice and gentle man who has a lot of interesting and artistic things to say in his movies. Unfortunately many of his projects never became reality like a movie called Bestiality in which I would have played the lead role. He always had huge problems financing his movies, I think now more than ever. I really love Rollin. His movies are very special, a different kind of cinema. If he ever asked me to work with him again I would say, “Yes, at once!”.
Rollin was the first moderately mainstream film director to spot Lahaie’s potential. He describes her as ‘a Nordic Goddess’. Lahaie’s air of intangible mystery, her exhibitionism and her well curved body made her ideal for Rollin’s enigmatic horror films. Rollin’s films work purely on a visual level. The dialogue is always second rate — especially when it’s been translated into English! His best films feature people who have presence, folks who can do outlandish things without batting an eyelid. In many ways Rollin’s films provided an ideal stepping stone for her. They proved that she could do other things onscreen, and they didn’t have dialogue that might trip her up.
She made three horror-related films with Rollin; Fascination (1978), Les raisins de la morte (1978) and La nuit des traquées (1980). Fascination was her first film for Rollin, and it more or less let the world know that a new star had arrived. Rollin used Lahaie to promote this old world slab of gothic horror, and the poster and pressbooks had photos and drawings of the luscious Ms L. wielding a scythe as an implement of doom. The image was at once striking, predatory and romantic.
Working with Rollin was a sort of ‘happy accident’ that spurred her on to take the craft of acting seriously.
“Brigitte Lahaie-The Marilyn of Murder!”, The Dark Side Horror Magazine No. 34 July / August 1993
Brigitte is very very intelligent and charming. She has an incredible charisma and whenever she appears on the screen creates a strange erotic atmosphere that is just incredible.
Jean Rollin, European Trash Cinema Vol. 2 No. 8
You also worked with Jess Franco.
Yes, it is quite difficult to say anything about him. I think he is a man with a lot of real talent but he just did too many movies. Franco is obsessed with directing and that is his big mistake. He is so fond of the directing process but never really cares about the final result. But he is a marvelous director. I can remember one scene in Dark Mission. I had a quite difficult scene where I had to cry. Before we shot that scene Franco came to me. He was very nice and made a lot of compliments. He said he wants me for his next movie and so on. He was really gentle. I was so excited about the idea of working with him in the future so I played my role as perfect as I could. I really wanted to show him he made the right choice. I think sometimes he is a genius on the set. He is a man with great visions and brilliant ideas but who also had a lot of bad luck in his career.
There are several rumors about Gefangene Frauen (Island Women) which was produced by Erwin C. Dietrich. Some people think Franco did that film.
No, it was Dietrich for sure. Franco had nothing to do with that picture.
Do you know whatever became of all the other quite famous French porno-starlets such as Karine Gambier for example who also worked quite often with Franco?
Unfortunately I really don’t know. We always had a quite good relationship. I saw her the last time five years ago.
Faceless was the last project you did with Franco.
Yes, oh God. It was such a difficult movie for everybody involved. In the very beginning the whole film was planned to be a very small low budget thriller, but as time went by, Rene Chateau, the producer, began to cast Telly Savalas, Helmut Berger, and others so the entire movie became quite big and expensive. Franco had a lot of problems during shooting. He had many quarrels with the producers and also had a very very bad relationship with FX-man Jacques Castinau. They almost fought every time they had to do a scene together. There were just too many people and too much money involved and so it became quite chaotic. Franco is used to working independently on the set I think. He was not really used to getting orders from every corner of the set and I think he was not very fond of this.
It was wonderful to work with Caroline Munro. She is so nice. She shares the same love for animals that I do. I was really surprised since I thought she was going to be arrogant. We went together to see my horses and really had a nice time together.
Faceless
Filmed in and around Paris during November and December of 1987, Faceless (a.k.a. Les Predators de la Nuit) revives the moribund subgenre of surgical atrocity movies initiated in 1959 by Georges Franju’s classic Eyes Without a Face (a.k.a. The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus) and imitated by Franco’s own The Awful Dr. Orloff in 1961 . The first feature produced by Rene Chateau, France’s leading video distributor. Faceless boasts an impressive international cast including Helmut Berger, Telly Savalas, Anton Diffring, Chris Mitchum and 79-year-old Howard Vernon, reprising his tireless Dr. Orloff persona. Jacques (Lifeforce) Gastineau provides graphic makeup FX.
Doubling as screenwriter under the pseudonym “Fred Castle,” Chateau personally chose Munro, having seen her work in Starcrash and Maniac, which he released on video in France. In a resonant bit of casting, she plays Jet-set American model Barbara Hallen, whose mysterious disappearance motivates the entire storyline. Kidnapped from a modeling session by actress Brigitte Lahaie (France’s most notorious porno queen in a rare mainstream role), Barbara is brought to a fashionable health farm run by sinister plastic surgeon Doctor Flamand (Berger), who constantly requires fresh blood and organs with which to rejuvenate his chic clientele. The Bloody Best Of Gorezone 1
What sort of person is Gérard Kikoïne?
He is a very simple and easy man to get along with. I think he is completely different from all the other X-directors I have worked with. Most of those men had sexual problems and were depressed in one way or another which gave them some “reason” to do those types of films. Maybe it’s the same with most porno actors. Kikoïne is a man who had absolutely no problems. He was just a normal, friendly guy. For example Frédéric Lansac or Francis Leroi are really perverted guys. Don’t get me wrong, I say perverted in a good sense. I think the movies they did were quite good.
I think José Bénazéraf is a very strange man based on what I’ve heard about him.
Oh, I don’t like him at all. I think he is really crazy, really really mad. He is also very right-wing and fascist. I absolutely hate that. I also don’t like the films I did with him. He made some good films in the sixties but the older he got the worse his movies became. I think he has nothing more to add right now. He burned out.
You also had a small role in Henry and June. I was quite surprised to see you in this picture. How did that happen?
Oh, that was a real adventure for me. I met Philip Kaufman one year ago. At first he didn’t want me for the part because of my porno career. Fortunately, he changed his mind. My role was very very small but nevertheless, we had a good working relationship. We worked very long to gel the scene right. I think the movie is quite good but unfortunately there are several scenes which I was not so fond of when I saw the film later on. I don’t think it represents what Henry Miller intended to say with his work.
Is there a director you would love to work with again?
Maybe Kaufman. I love to work with young directors. They are so full of energy and ideas. I think they have much more to say and to give the audience than most of the older ones.
You were announced to star in Roger Vadim’s film project, Kamasutra. Why was this film never made?
I don’t know for sure. Probably the usual problems here in Europe. I think they had financial problems and were not able to raise enough money. It was film about two young people who discover the Kamasutra and because of this, the joy of sex. At the time I read the script I was not so much fascinated by the story. I found it quite boring. Vadim is a very soft, sweet person who knows exactly what he wants but unfortunately I never had a very good relationship with him. Who knows why? Maybe we were too different. Perhaps I was too introverted for him.
I don’t mind talking about those films. I owe a lot to them. They made me famous, and it would be ridiculous to deny that. I was the first French sex star, after all, so I certainly have to carry this reputation with me. I loved the job, and it was really important for me to have done it. I was very shy, very unsure of myself, and doing those films gave me a lot of self-confidence. However, I have done many other things since, so it’s a bit odd that people are still mainly interested in this aspect of my life.
The other Brigitte
Maybe she isn’t quite as internationally famous as Bardot, but Brigitte Lahaie has come a long way, in both senses. She also gives a good interview, being blisteringly frank by nature. Tony Crawley discovered this along the way…
In the 50s /60s, the Brigitte called Bardot opened the censored door of cine-sex. In the 70s/80s, another dishy Brigitte busted the door — by going down on it! She’s the first — the only true blue star of French porno. In four years, she made 47 films, for example; I’m Hot Everywhere; I’m A Beautiful Bitch; Wanted: Sex Slave For Couple; Couples On Heat; Hot Emilia; Hot Parties; Porno Excesses; Fascination; Vibrations; Between My Thighs; Come – I Like It… even Don’t Touch My Willy!
Her name on the credits (no names or photos allowed on French porn posters) was a quality-control guarantee of explicit sex at its honeyed homiest- Since she quit, French porno has tumbled downhill — cinemas closing up, yesterday’s hits on cassette while today’s films become amateur throwbacks to porno origins, just fucking without pretence of storyline.
Brigitte Lahaie, though, has become an even bigger star.
Her autobiography is a best-seller. She has a disc in the charts, an album around the comer. She makes three-to-four straight movies a year — after a period when nobody would touch her until realising the heavy-bosomed girl meant well, had studied drama, mime, song, dance and could act. Her latest hit is a short — a complete copy of the Rambo II trailer, examining Brigitte’s muscles as a gun-toting nun; Therese II; The Mission. People think it’s a trailer and are demanding to see the full film!
There is a much lesser porno starlet now heading a top French rock group, another had dallied in straight TV work — announcing the commercial breaks! But Brigitte Lahaie (sometimes Lahaye) is the only global-blues queen to successfully cross over to the straight world. Indeed, most recent crossovers go in the opposite direction.
Far more successful than America’s Marilyn Chambers, Brigitte was in Diva, worked with Yves Montand and Alain Delon — who directed her in a cop-movie. “Montand never knew of me, Delon did and said it didn’t matter.” Plus various Jess Franco adventures with Robert Mitchum’s son Chris — an increasingly loud voice in the affairs of America’s Screen Actor’s Guild. So you can be sure he knows who he’s working with.
Royally praised for her book (she was even invited on the tres intellectual TV book show, normally reserved for Solzhenitsyn, Mailer, Fowles and French Academicans), Brigitte’s honesty is among her greatest gifts. Of course, it would be silly hiding her fuck ‘n’ suck past by taking a new name (she tried that and gave it up), because everyone knows her in France. “I was a star for them — not for me!” Her career hasn’t affected her mind, nor her sumptuous body. Although she doesn’t talk dirty like America’s hard-chorus, she hides nothing as we sit in her sunny apartment as Neuilly-sur-Seine, beneath a huge nude painting of her with a large dog. The actual dog lay on her bed, eyeing me warily…
What astonishes me is the speed of your career.
My first career, you mean… because my new one took forever… to get started.
Right — your porno career.
I never liked this word porno. I use it, but I prefer porno-erotic … or better still being introduced on TV as a star of filmes du charme!
But there you were, a good little girl from Lyon. Roman Catholic Good, solid bourgeois parents. Ashamed of your big tits. No confessions of masturbation, although finding bike-rides excited you. Giving your virginity to Serge at 17. Moving to Paris at 18, with your sister. Working in a shoe shop. Getting a fuck-film job — not knowing what kind of film it was — not even having seen a porno-erotic film. And bingo! You strip off, open your legs and screw happily on camera. The surprise is that you did it.
You have understood all the book, I think! I answered a newspaper advertisement from an agency finding girls for pornographic movies — of course, I didn’t know that then. I met a director. I had to undress for him. He asked if I could do that kind of movie. I was surprised, but not shocked. It was… rather funny!
You hadn’t even posed naked for Razzle or any other magazine then. The director says, “Now a man is going to fuck you…” —I would’ve thought the nice little Lyonaise with big tits would have fled! Why weren’t you shocked?
Well, it was a little shock. Not enough to make me run. It was an opportunity to do something different – that’s important for me. Of course, if Polanski had found me, I might’ve had a different
Maybe not…! But there you are, first film and you’re told to fuck on camera and you agree.
That’s my personality. That’s why I did this job very well. If that’s what they wanted me to do — ça va! OK! For me, it was natural not immoral. I was very, very naive! It was my opportunity, finally, to like myself. It was my subconscious which decided this was the right work for me. Because in a short time I discovered a lot of things about
For the porno punters, producers, you were fresh meal. What did you get from that first experience?
Oh, it was wonderful to discover that I could excite a man. Me! Just me! That was the great challenge for me. Because I was sure I was ugly. Not true! But something I really believed. Also, I think I was exhibitionistic. Very free. So to make that film was not bad. It was even fun!
Most porno girls are proven exhibitionists. You didn’t find out until, as your book says, you were being screwed and saw yourself in a mirror… and in the eyes of the people watching on the set.
I think the camera, the mirror and all the people were important to me. I suppose I knew I was always exhibitionistic… just didn’t realise it until then. For me, it was all very natural… yet I was a little disappointed by that first film in Normandy. I did another one or three — then came the shock. I stopped for two months. Maybe it was “wrong” after all. I talked about it to my sister. She said I should continue. But it was a decision made with my own hands. I wasn’t pressured into it. I can’t do something I don’t want to do. An easy decision. And lucky. I met Francis Leroi, who suggested I turn blonde. My real colour is like you…
Grey?
(Laugh). No! was brown then. Fair or blonde is better for me.
But unlike most porno princesses you never changed your name?
Not really. My real name is Flemish. Very difficult (her sole secret, she declines to spell it — something like Vanlahagen [Van Meerhaegue]). I adapted it into French. My paternal grandfather’s Dutch. But I’m French.
And you’d really not even seen sex film at that time?
The first porno-erotic I saw — without me — was about four years after I began. I’m not interested… they’re not exciting for me. Well, sometimes — but very rarely. Even watching my own films is not exciting to me. The first time I saw myself — yes, I shocked myself. Because I saw the movies, I saw another facet of me. I think that was the beginning of my idea to stop…
There’s two of you — the nice little girl from Lyon and this raving nympho on screen?
Yes, I’m Dr Jekyll and Mademoiselle Hyde!
Which one was excited by the camera and crew?
I think, both. We came together.
Didn’t you though!
If the audience likes me, it’s because there’s something naive, vulnerable about me — the other me. I’m the eyes of one and the body of the one on the screen.
Somebody — the most magnificent in Euro-porno! Yet dumb Lyon kids called you names because of your big tits. Are big boobs a family tradition?
My mother, yes. My sister, no. My two brothers never mentioned them, although they seemed to like big breasts. I found their copy of Lui magazine once. My brothers were strange for me — they still are! I see them sometimes, but we don’t speak—They’ve never mentioned my films, either. Or, not until the book. That’s changed everything — because people didn’t really know me. They knew my name. ‘They saw my films. But they didn’t know me or, what they thought they knew about me was not correct.
Lui Magazine No. 278, 1987 (cover) and No. 194, Mars 1980.
Your shoe shop clients liked your tits..
The majority were all right but there were some who loved it when I was at their feet, because they could see down my shirt to my breasts. They liked it also when I had to touch their ankles. They’d spend hours with me, trying on shoes galore. But they always bought one pair — sometimes two or three! That was my introduction to Paris… I just think I turned them on. I had fatter breasts then.
They still look splendid — why, what have you done to ’em?
I seem to have lessened than a little — yes? I don’t know why. Certainly not surgery. Maybe it’s because I ride horses so often. But now I’m much slimmer in my bosom. It’s like the difference between Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel — and her later films. She’s not the same woman.
“Originally I wanted to be a model. I answered adverts. But they always said, no, I was too short or my breasts were too big — that’s funny to think now!”
I know a girl who hated her tits and had ’em made smaller.
That’s stupid. If she’s happier that’s fine. I’m not like her. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I’m just…
Ample, as we English say. And 47 pornos, that’s what five sex-acts per movie — 235 public fucks — doesn’t seem to have affected you badly.
Because my life is tranquil. I sleep a lot. I don’t drink much. I eat sufficiently. I’m happy. All’s well… maybe I have some scars. They’re not getting smaller, they remain with me — bad memories, bad moments — but now I can deal with them. You can’t make these pictures for four years — and not have some scars. But all adventures are like that. My philosophy is; mistakes make experiences.
Your mother said “Oh my poor Brigitte, I hope you’ll never regret your career.”
I haven’t… I’ll be frank with you. I’ve never regretted my hardcore movies but sometimes I regret the partouzes.
(Translation: a partouze is an orgy). There’s quite an orgy circuit in France. Lots of famous mimes at ’em — ever recognise anyone?
Yes, of course! Celebrities. From politics. Some actors, directors, too — that didn’t surprise me. It was very difficult to surprise me. It was very difficult to surprise me at that epoch. Oh yes, and a lot of writers — they were the majority
Oh really! Nobody invites me! Why did they invite you — you were unknown token you began…
I was shooting porno movies, so I couldn’t refuse a partouze. Well, I could … of course I could. But it’s done now. I first went to one the same day as I started my first porno-erotic movie — February 6, 1976. I continued because my boyfriend was very excited by that. I think people go to partouzes to live out their fantazies.
You went out of love?
Yes, during three years I did it for Philippe. I met him in a partouze! So that’s… delicate ground.
True love — or was sex a drug for you then?
More of a compulsion. Sex was never a drug for me. Maybe for him. I think I loved him. I think he loved me. But he liked to suffer like that. He would just be watching. And for him it was a supreme jouissance (orgasmic pleasure).
He never participated?
Oh, no, no! He just watched… sometimes we’d have a dinner at home with a couple — that’d be my idea. After dinner, the man was for me — because I wanted him. But that’s not a partouze – that’s…
Civilised!
Exactly! I’d be with the man, Philippe with the girl. But he didn’t like that, it was not exciting for him. He needed to see me being taken my men. Not many but some… Some women like partouzes because they can make love with a lot of men.
“Many people think that men have destroyed me. But that’s not true at all. In fact through making porno movies I came to know who I am. And now I’m very happy to be me”
Photo: Richard Allan and Brigitte Lahaie
What is a lot of men?
Ten or twenty — maybe more.
How different are such orgies from porno film-action? Less structured… more fun?
It’s another mise-en-scene. Really different. To tell you the truth, it was pleasant at the beginning. Impressive! At first, I went with my sister. Out of curiosity. Just to experience it. Then, because of my boyfriend, I soon got tired of it. Too much! OK, I accepted it. But they’re not good memories. Now I regret it.
Why — exactly?
Because it was a gaspillage (a waste) giving myself to so many people. I didn’t know, much less care for. Only at the last Cannes Festival, I met somebody who said; “Hello Brigitte — don’t you remember me?” No…! He made it clear he’d had me at a partouze. That’s why I regret them. A lot of men made love with me. They were not my decision, not my choice. Oh, I can sleep… but it’s something I don’t like to remember or talk about.
Were you the star at orgies because you were the big porno star?
I think I was the most beautiful woman at them.
She said modestly…
No, it’s true! Generally the women are not that beautiful.
Back to your hard-core movies — never regretted them?
Just a bit when I was dans le trou (in the hole; unemployed) from ’82 to ’85. If then I’d been a young actress with nothing behind me, no past… it would’ve been easier. Except I’m sure it was a good way for me. C’est une experience formidable! I learned a lot of things… About cameras, film technique, how to best make use of my personality, to be… er…
Say it in French, if you like.
(Laugh). I don’t know how to say it in French either. Basically, to be free, to use my own personality. Even being dans la trou was good for me. For an actress, it’s important to have suffered, any experience is a good experience — you can use it later in work. The films also taught me a lot about sex.
About sex? You said porno taught you “about love” before.
Sometime’s it’s the same. Love, sex — where’s the difference? It’s like erotic and porno movies, soft and hard, where’s the difference? You can do a lot of sex with love and you can do a lot of love without sex. I learned about both.
How did your parents find out about your career? — from nosey neighbours’ poison-pen letters?
Oh, no, I told them the truth. Not from the first movie, about six months later. It wasn’t easy but better they heard it from me. My mother, being a woman, understood — in her way.
Your father said never darken doorstep again?
(Laugh). Almost. I think he accepted it, when he realised how much money I could earn at this kind of work. He’s a banker. He knows about money With him, it all comes down to money!
Your book begins: “I’m always scared of not being loved.” Porno perhaps…
…my way to get love? Maybe. I now know that I’m lovable, that men will really love me. Yet I’m still insecure… all the normal human complexes.
Source: “The Other Brigitte…” Scream Queens Illustrated, Vol. 1, No. 2. Winter 1994.
The Forbidden Book of Beauty 