Interview: Actor Romain Duris, the sultan of suave

Is Romain Duris the man to fill one of the great vacuums in Hollywood? Such is the dearth of new male stars, American producers are looking to France for their leading men. Mathieu Amalric was snapped up by Steven Spielberg to star in Munich. Gaspard Ulliel played Hannibal Lecter in Young Hannibal. Guillaume Canet could be found in The Beach. But it was Duris whom The New York Times pinpointed as the most likely to succeed Stateside.

The 33-year-old became a sensation with his turn in Jacques Audiard's The Beat That My Heart Skipped, a remake of James Toback's Fingers. On paper, it's a preposterous tale of a gangster's son who dreams of being a concert pianist. That the box-office smash was cited as a rare example of a remake being better than the original was entirely down to Duris: as a tough guy, he was full of brooding sneers and cold stares; as a romantic lead, a single bat of his eyelashes made women weak at the knees.

So when the producers of Casino Royale came knocking with contracts to play a villain, it seemed like a natural progression for the most sought-after young actor in Europe. But Duris surprised everyone by turning down the part and instead made two French films. The first was the Nouvelle Vague homage, Dans Paris, in which he played a forlorn soul recovering from a break-up. Then came Molière in which Duris, with a Cavalier wig and glorious facial hair, camps it up as the playwright.

When I meet Duris in a Paris hotel, he has shaved his head, lost several pounds and looks far from Hollywood leading-man material. He insists on doing the interview in French despite the fact that he speaks English. And his explanation of why he turned down the Bond role is fervently patriotic. "I haven't even seen the James Bond film. I didn't take it because when French actors are in American films, they don't act very well and the films are not very good. I don't know why that is, maybe it is just bad luck."

It's little wonder that the actor is so down about the prospects of French actors overseas, because the two English-language films that Duris has been in have both flopped. He played a hippie film-maker in Roman Coppola's sci-fi fantasy CQ, and in James Ivory's Le Divorce he played Kate Hudson's radical lover, Yves. He contends, "To work in the James Ivory film was more of a curiosity. I think I have a lot to learn as an actor, and there is much still to do in roles using my mother tongue. It is more difficult for me to act in English as I'm not bilingual. We live in a time when many French actors dream of working overseas, but I'm not really interested. I don't know how to arrive at my best performance in English." Not that Duris needs to worry that he's limiting his opportunities by only working in French. He has been inundated with scripts and has first pick of roles for actors his age. There is no particular reason as to why he seems to jump from doing gritty and ambitious modern fare such as Dans Paris and The Beat That My Heart Skipped to flamboyant period movies like Arsène Lupin and Molière.

He explains, "I don't make plans for my career. I have a great agent [David Valenti] and we work well together, because we choose scripts from the heart. We look at the scripts and choose the parts that please us, not because of a pre-ordained desire to have a big career. Some of the scripts are clearly not right for me. For example, a lot of scripts will ask me to play 45 [years old], but I can't do this because I'm not 45 and don't know anything about this. We only try to do the crème de la crème, but even doing this we still pick films that don't turn out to be good. It's demanding, because even though I know that I'm only trying to do great work, I know I will be disappointed because some films don't turn out well."

I'm surprised that he decided to do Molière. Like Shakespeare in Love, it unashamedly bears no resemblance to the truth. It's a fabricated farce set in the months after Molière has been released from jail and before he returned as a triumphant playwright, a period that biographers know little about. It's in the tradition of the French farce, the type of film that the Cahiers critics, who created the Nouvelle Vague, used to rally against. Previously, Duris has said, "I don't think much of popular French films. When my girlfriend [the actress Olivia Bonamy] asks me to go and see a French film, I'm always saying no. The only French films I like are the Nouvelle Vague."

So why Molière? "I was attracted to the role because we were not trying to make a biopic on Molière that looks into his life and is very heavy. We have a light, humorous, popular tone that makes a lot of references to the era without taking a historical point of view. It is not Molière, but we capture the spirit and comedy of his personality. If we had treated Molière like we did Arsène Lupin, it would have been rubbish."

The reason that Duris has a shaved head when we speak is that he has just finished starring opposite Juliette Binoche in Paris, directed by Cédric Klapisch. It is the sixth time that Duris has worked with the director – a relationship echoing that of François Truffaut's with Jean-Pierre Léaud. It was Klapisch who discovered Duris outside a Paris art school. The teenager was studying painting and playing drums in an acid-jazz band when Klapisch suggested he try out for a part in his debut film, Le Péril Jeune. Soon, Duris took up acting full-time.

In 2002, Klapisch directed Duris in L'Auberge espagnole, about a group of students in Barcelona. It was one of the most popular films that year in France and Duris was suddenly the country's hottest young actor. Despite all the offers that have since come in, he has remained loyal to Klapisch and Tony Gatlif, who cast the actor in many roles. Partly, this is because he doesn't like working with first-time directors: "I'm always worrying too much that they won't be up to the task."

Now, Duris is once again challenging himself to act in English. Afterwards, in which he stars opposite John Malkovich and Evangeline Lilly, is the most French of American movies. It's directed by Gilles Bourdos and is adapted from Guillaume Musso's novel. Duris plays a New York lawyer who has married his childhood sweetheart. It's a supernatural thriller that might just persuade Duris that he can cut the mustard Stateside.

Many in Hollywood are praying that Duris turns out to be the man with universal box-office appeal they're crying out for. He has the looks and the talent, but the big question is whether he has the necessary desire that is needed to turn a good actor in to an American superstar.

Molière opens on 13 July