Mathieu Amalric is best known outside France for his role in Steven Spielberg's "Munich," but in his own country he has been one of the best-loved actors since the mid 1990s.
He was handpicked by director Julian Schnabel to play the part of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle France magazine who suffered a stroke at the age of 43 and wrote his autobiography using just his left eye (the only body part he could move as a sufferer of Locked-In syndrome) to blink out words.
Amalric says in many ways this was the most difficult role he's attempted. "Because so much of the story is told through the camera lens, functioning as the left eye of Jean-Do," explained Amalric from Paris during a phone interview. "I think many other actors would have balked at the idea. But I felt the 'camera-as-man' approach was best to tell the story of Jean-Do. It turned out to require a lot of restraint — and for me to curb my acting ambitions to get to a point where I really wanted to know and feel what Jean-Do had gone through."