QUESTIONS FOR MARCEL MARCEAU

By: David Rakoff
The New York Times, May 14, 2001

-You have just been named spokesman for the World Assembly on Aging. Tell us a bit about that. 

They probably named me spokesman because I have such energy onstage. I'm a good example of how, if you lead a healthy life and have good genes, then you don't age easily. You keep your energy. 

-Well, Mr. Marceau, you're 78. How do you keep your energy? 

Where did Picasso get his energy for painting? I remember I saw Picasso when I was very young and he was in his 80's. He had just his shorts on, and he was still athletic. My body has remained young. One time in Princeton, someone went to the box office and said: "Give me my money back. This man is too young to be Mr. Marceau." Onstage, people think I am 40 years old. What can I do? I cannot be sorry for it. It's a gift, it's a mystery. 

-Then what do you say to the old people who aren't so mysteriously gifted? 

Life is unjust. You have people who die young. You have people who can be very old. It's fate. I have a cousin who swims every day who's 90 years old. He still looks fantastic -- not fantastic; of course you can see that he's no longer a young man -- but he's thin, he's straight like a tree. I notice that in America people seem to be aging much more rapidly. I don't know why; maybe they stop exercising, they eat too much sugar. I think it's a question of discipline. 

-Do you have a special diet? 

My diet is my work. Activity makes me forget time. This is another secret. I think that older people are very much encouraged when they see me. 

-Have you slowed down at all? 

I still tour the world. I teach in my school when I'm in Paris, and I have a company. But of course, life can stop at any moment. 

-Your international fame is built on silence. What's it like now to be a public speaker? Is it a difficult transition? 

First of all, I teach. I have become a good speaker from that. In Paris I'm already a spokesman: a spokesman for the art of mime. It started in ancient Greece and Rome, went to the commedia dell'arte, went to the British pantomime school, which gave us Chaplin, Keaton. And in France we had also the white-faced Pierrot. 

-May I ask you, though, about silence? 

Silence does not exist. 

-But most people have never heard you speak - except for the word "no," your single spoken contribution to Mel Brooks's "Silent Movie." For your public, silence does exist. 

I make the visible invisible and the invisible visible. People think that when we are silent, you have nothing to say. But you can make people laugh and cry through the tragedy and the comedy of life. During the war I was in the French underground, and I survived. I think very often about this: that people who were 20 years old died in the war. Maybe I'm a spokesman because I am a witness of my time. 

-Have you ever been tempted to try acting with your voice? 

Yes, of course. Jean Renoir and Vittorio De Sica often said: "Why don't you make a film? We'll put you in a movie." But I was almost always under contract. I had no time to do films. At a certain time I regretted it, but I think it's better to dedicate your life completely to the perfection of an art form. I am much more happy to be remembered as having been maybe the most important mime in my century. Chaplin in films, Marceau in theater. 

-But Chaplin eventually did speak. 

Even in the talking films he did, the mime remained in him. When you see "Limelight" today, or "Monsieur Verdoux," or "The Great Dictator," you feel that. 

-Has your own work changed as you've gotten older? 

I started my career when I was 24. It was light. We had just come out of the war and the occupation of five years. When I reached my 40's and 50's, I started to create deeper work, like "The Creation of the World," "Bip Remembers," "Bip in Modern and Future Life." With the company I have done full dramas: "The Overcoat," by Nikolai Gogol, "Don Juan," by Tirso de Molina. 

-In America mime has gone out of fashion. Why do you think that is? 

What went out of fashion is bad mime. What people see on the street are mimes who have no education and have not worked with a master. But of course it is better to be a street mime than to be a street mugger.