Can there possibly be a more melifluous name for a young actress than Clémence Poésy?
Sometimes Agent Triple P spots an actress in a minor role who impresses him to such an extent that he looks her up afterwards. We did it some years ago when we spotted a teenage Rachel Weisz in an episode of Inspector Morse. We just did the same with Mlle Poésy.
We have to take someone to the new Harry Potter exhibition at Leavesden Studios later in the year but given that we had only watched half of the first film on an aeroplane flight we felt we needed to know more about the phenomenon; otherwise the hours we will no doubt have to spend there could be incredibly tedious.
So we setlled down over about ten days and watched all eight films. It was quite strange to watch the young cast grow up in such a concentrated time period. We can't think of an equivalent where a junior cast matures over the course of a series of films like this. The nearest equivalent, we suppose, would be The Waltons TV series.
Anyway, we got to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (or Goblin of Fire as S insists on calling it) where there is a sort of wizarding Olympics. Cue the arrival of the all-girl French team, in fetching blue outfits, led by their chief witch, Fleur Delacour.
Clémence, as Fleur, didn't have a lot to do in the film, really, but always looked elegant doing it and had the dubious honour of being the only girl to appear in a Harry Potter film in skimpy clothes (a very snug swimsuit). She was, at twenty two, rather older than the rest of the juvenile cast.
Mlle Poésy, coincidentally, is currently appearing on the BBC in an adaption of Sebastien Faulks' World War I drama, Birdsong.
She was born in a suburb of Paris and her father is a theatrical director and actor. She had her first acting role at the age of fourteen and is now twenty nine.
Apart from appearing in three Harry Potter films and in French films and TV she has also been in, rather incongruously, Gossip Girl. She has just finished making a film with Michael Caine.
Not surprisingly she has done some modelling notably for the perfume of the fashion house Chloé.
Unlike most French actresses, who seem happy to strip off for the camera at the first opportunity, she was unhappy with her topless scene when she was eighteen; complaining that it was inappropriate for a director to ask her to do that. She now has a clause in all her contracts which say that nude scenes of her (she hasn't said she won't do them) are not to be used as publicity stills or in film trailers.
Sorry Clémence, but if you do the scene, whatever your contract says, there is always the print screen button!
Agent Triple P likes a girl with a strong nose and full lips so hopes Clémence will go far!
