For Adèle Exarchopoulos, her first taste of film stardom was the literal taste of Toblerone. Then 13 years old, the young Parisian had just been cast in her first film, Jane Birkin’s autobiographical directing debut Boxes, and was invited round to the icon’s home. “I went to the bathroom to wash my hands,” Exarchopoulos recalls. “And I saw for the first time in my life a claw-foot tub. With a bowl of mini Toblerones next to it. And I was like: ‘Why are you eating chocolate when you’re taking a bath? This is so cool.’ And Jane said: ‘You want to sleep over? You can take a bath and eat some chocolate.’”
She beams at the memory. We’re talking, via Zoom, days after Birkin died aged 76; Exarchopoulos remembers her fondly as “the first person who gave me a chance – really benevolent, kind and loving”. They’d seen each other again over the years, but the close-quarters shoot is what sticks in her mind: “Cinema is about living really intense stuff with people, for a certain period of time, and afterwards you all go back to your daily lives. It’s like a mini death after, suddenly no longer sharing that intimacy, but you have this kind of forever tenderness for those people. Film shoots are like little summer love stories.”
