Story highlights
Frank Leboeuf has gone from delivering passes to delivering lines
Now a stage and movie actor, ex-France defender's latest role is to fight the Nazis
He admits to a dual passion for both movies and football growing up in a French village
Still an avid Chelsea fan, he tips the London club to win the Premier League
He puts the gun to the woman’s head, pulls the trigger and watches as her body hits the floor.
A World Cup-winning footballer with France and a lauded defender, Frank Leboeuf is now executing Nazi collaborators.
“It’s the first time I’ve killed anybody,” Leboeuf reveals to CNN, reflecting on a dramatic career switch – and also recent reversal in his new life as an actor.
“It’s a change as I’ve been killed a couple of times.
Thankfully, Leboeuf’s victim is fictional and, rather than a new life as his character Marcel Deville, a member of the French resistance, the former Chelsea defender is reflecting on a new career on the silver screen in the movie Allies.
From day one, football and film were his two great passions, and both consumed him with equal force.
“The posters on my wall were Michel Platini and Jean Tigana alongside Sean Connery and Jean-Paul Belmondo,” he recalls, referring to two French football greats, a former James Bond and one of France’s great cinematic heroes.
“I think my first passion when I was younger was shared with my mother… the movies.
“I loved watching plays as well but there wasn’t much chance to pursue that in a small French village but my father created a football academy in our village and that was it.”
Each day, be it returning home from school or football training, the first thing he would do – even before removing his coat – was to plant himself in front of the television and watch a movie.
“It’s like two careers isn’t it? One for my father, one for my mother, both for me,” said the 46-year-old as he talks about the opportunity to pursue his two great loves.
Leboeuf is also currently treading the boards in French theater with a role in Ma Belle-Mere, Mon Ex et Moi (My Mother-in-law, My Ex and Me), a comedy in which he plays the role of the straight man.
“The similarity with both is that I always complain about performance in both,” said Leboeuf as he talks about the demands of professional sport and acting.
“After a match, even if we won I’d be unhappy about a missed pass. After a play, I’ll be like ‘I was s***’ or else think how I didn’t deliver a line properly.
Having earned 50 caps for France and man-marked Brazilian striker Ronaldo out of the 1998 World Cup final, Leboeuf is candid enough to admit an actor’s life doesn’t quite give him the same adrenalin rush he experienced as a footballer.
“Films are not the same as it’s a slow process and the theater is different as it’s not like playing in front of 90,000 people.
“In this play, I have to deliver a line for the funny man and it has to be right or else his subsequent line isn’t funny as it doesn’t make sense.
“So there’s that pressure to deliver which is maybe the same in football. You have to be precise.”
His big break as a thespian came when he was still on Chelsea’s books in 2001.
Ronnie Harwood, who won the Oscar for best adapted screenplay for another World War II film The Pianist in 2002, approached him to get involved in a film version of his play Taking Sides.
The chance to act alongside Harvey Keitel and Stellan Skarsgard, planted the thought in Leboeuf’s that he might pursue an acting career when his footballing forays were over.
In 2005, he relocated to Los Angeles for acting classes and he still has a home there.
It was while on holiday in the United States that he received a script for Allies, having to deliver his audition via his iPhone with his wife. To his surprise he bagged the part.
“I never thought I’d get the part as it seemed like a bad job but I got a call to say that Dominic [Burns, the director] wanted me in the movie.”
Leboeuf is not the first French footballer to have pursued an acting profession after hanging up his boots, with the former Chelsea defender following in the footsteps of Eric Cantona.
The ex-Manchester United star’s English-speaking roles include a part as a French aristocrat in the 1998 movie Elizabeth, which was nominated for seven Oscars, and more recently in Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric about a postman who hallucinates that his idol, Cantona, follows him and gives him advice.
“I don’t know him,” admitted Leboeuf. “I played against him at the end of his career when I was at Chelsea and we played in the national team, one of the last times he played for the team.
“I know his younger brother better but not him but I’ve still followed his career.
“There’s obviously a parallel between what we’re doing, and he’s a great example of how to be a success from football to acting.”
He might have won the World Cup and European Championship with France as well as six trophies for Chelsea, but Leboeuf is clearly a man that looks ahead rather than to his past successful sporting career.
So much so that that his World Cup winners medal was in the glove box of his car for a year until his son unearthed it.
A player who arrived in London in 1996 as a relative unknown on English shores for a fee of £2.5 million from Strasbourg to become a fans’ favorite, Leboeuf still describes himself as “Chelsea’s No.1 fan.”
“I don’t get to Stamford Bridge to watch as much as I might like. I had to miss the Chelsea-Maribor match on TV the other night as I was on stage but the first thing I do as I come off stage is to check the scores.”
His beloved Chelsea are currently top of the Premier League in England and are top of Group G in the Champions League.
“For me, at the beginning of the season, I felt the Premier League would be between Chelsea and Manchester City, and I believe it to be the same,” he adds.
“Of course, it would be more desirable if it’s Chelsea and they look good, and in the Champions League too. Of course, yes, the Double is possible.
“Jose Mourinho had asked to be given a year to get the squad he wanted and to deliver,” added Leboeuf, referring to the Chelsea manager.
“Mourinho desperately wants to win the Champions League for Chelsea and he has put himself under pressure to do that. He wants to do that to add to the Chelsea legend.”
In his own way, Leboeuf was one too, even if the Stamford Bridge faithful, however, might struggle to recognize him in his current guise.
Allies is available on dvd and digital download from 3 November courtesy of EOne
