Les Acteurs anonymes (2001)
Directed by Benoît Cohen

Film Synopsis

Been bitten by the acting bug?  Had your life totally ruined by the compulsive need to regurgitate words that are not your own in front of an audience or camera?  Desperate to give it all up and become a normal human being again?  If so, then despair thee not, as there is programme of detoxification that exists especially for people like you: Acteurs Anonymes!  Situated in the middle of the countryside, hundreds of miles from the nearest film studio or theatre, this vital sanctuary guarantees to cure any thespian of his or her acting addiction - through an intensive course that last just four weeks!

Via a series of carefully conceived exercises, any actor, no matter how far gone, will be cured of the urge to perform any role.  Special centres exist to wean people off drugs, gambling and alcohol, so why not acting?  After all, this is an addiction like any other - and one that is known to send its sufferers to the limits of comic and tragic excess.   Here are just a few examples of the happy individuals whose lives have been transformed for the better by Acteurs Anonymes.  Mathieu was once a success junkie - he just couldn't live without it!  In the end, it made his life a constant hell, each triumph feeding his ego and making him hungrier for even greater success.  It was a never-ending spiral that could only end in disappointment or worse - a cabinet full of tacky awards.

Marie-Sophie has a similar trauma-inducing condition - she is utterly petrified at the thought of failure.  Even the merest suspicion of a bad review is enough to send her into a frenzy of abject despair.  And then there is Gaëla, whose life has been totally ruined by stage fright.  Drug addicts, gamblers and alcoholics are no longer the social pariahs they once were - we look more sympathetically on their plight and welcome the existence of organisations that help them to kick the habit.  Maybe the time has come to look upon actors in the same light.  Surely they deserve our sympathy and support just as much?  Pity the poor deluded thespian...