Louis Garrel has spent 37 of his 42 years in front of the camera. From a child actor in films by his father – the renowned filmmaker Philippe Garrel – to a brooding, melancholic romantic, and, more recently, the hapless comic hero of his own works, the camera has documented his career in real time.
Just when you think you’ve figured him out, the Paris-born actor, nominated several times for a César, reveals something new: an ennui-ridden revolutionary in Bernardo Bertolucci’s cult classic The Dreamers; the suave but toxic Jacques de Bascher in the biopic Saint Laurent; an uptight King Louis XIII in French blockbuster The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan; or Friedrich, Jo March’s scholarly love interest, in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. This year, he will star opposite Angelina Jolie in Couture, Camille Cottin in Juste Une Illusion, and Jasmine Trinca in It Will Happen Tonight, directed by the legendary Italian cinéaste Nanni Moretti.
Louis Garrel wears Dior wool jacket, £3,100, silk shirt, POA, wool trousers, £1,200, leather shoes, £970, and wool tie, POA © Christopher Anderson
Today Garrel has arrived in a different guise again: that of a working dad, with his four-year-old son Azel in tow. The actor is dressed in a black T-shirt and hoodie, loose-fitting, washed-out black Gap jeans, New Balance trainers and mismatched socks. He’s distressed about his socks – losing them is a constant failing of his, and even when he invests in high-quality ones, it never pays off.
