It was Oscar season in Hollywood, and I had been sent to the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills for an interview with one of the year’s breakout stars.
As I entered the lobby, I saw him immediately: his shaggy black-and-white locks, those distinctive, eerie blue eyes. He was wearing a leash, and a female fan had wrapped her arms around him. A crowd of people were snapping photographs.
Like Tom Cruise, Messi, the dog from Anatomy of a Fall, looked a little smaller in real life, but he had the same intense charisma. The French drama, which had provided Messi’s first major role, had been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best actress, best director and best picture. Messi’s performance as a blind child’s guide dog had astonished many viewers, and had catapulted the seven-year-old border collie to the status of canine celebrity.
Last year, Messi won the Palm Dog at Cannes, which his trainer, Laura Martin Contini, called “the height of recognition” in the field of cinema dog training. Some of Messi’s fans are now agitating for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to introduce the Pawscar.
In the film, a writer, played by Sandra Hüller, is put on trial for murder after her husband falls to his death from a window of their isolated mountain chalet. The main witnesses in the case are Daniel, the couple’s 11-year-old son, and Daniel’s guide dog, Snoop, who seems uncannily perceptive of the human drama around him. The film’s climax is a scene in which Snoop is poisoned and almost dies – a performance so realistic that it left audiences shocked at the animal’s acting ability.
And the Oscar for bestest boi goes to Messi from 'Anatomy of a Fall.' #Oscars pic.twitter.com/V5a1JCyACs
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 13, 2024
“Well I just saw the greatest acting performance of my life and it was not by Sandra Hüller or a child actor…it was by a dog,” the actor Ayo Edebiri wrote on her popular Letterboxd account.
With Oscar voting coming to a close, Messi had flown business class from France, where he lives, to Hollywood, to assist in Anatomy of a Fall’s best picture campaign. The trip was going well. Messi had been recognized at the airport. Then he had become the unexpected star of an A-list luncheon for Oscar nominees, cuddling with Bradley Cooper and Billie Eilish. People magazine had written up his appearance, and the best actress nominee Emma Stone had gushed about his acting abilities.
During lunch, Martin Contini had decided to show off Messi’s best trick: he would play dead. Ryan Gosling, who was at a nearby table, rushed over to help: he “thought there was something wrong with the dog”, she said. Video clips of the moment show the Barbie actor looking disturbed, before Messi jumps up again, completely fine. Didn’t Gosling know he was an actor?
Two days later, Messi was in the middle of a full day of press Q&As – eight or 10 in all, many with journalists who had never previously interviewed a dog.
Becoming Messi
If you want to be a canine cinema star, it helps to be a nepo puppy. Recent Palm Dog awards at Cannes have gone to dogs owned by Tilda Swinton (2021) and Quentin Tarantino (2019).
That wasn’t Messi’s path. Martin Contini, a professional dog trainer who lives outside Paris, adopted him as a puppy from a neighbor. The neighbor, Martin Contini said, was surprised when she picked “the ugliest dog of the litter”. But “there was something about him,” she added, describing him as “un chien de cinéma” – “a real movie dog”. Her two children named him Messi in honor of the soccer player.
Messi was the first dog Martin Contini trained for cinema, she said, and their skills evolved together. Preparing a dog for on-camera roles is slow work, requiring patience and trust. Messi started with “the fundamentals of sit, stay, lie down”, Martin Contini said through a translator. (She speaks French, and so does Messi.)
Later, she said, trainers introduce elements like cameras and boom mics, to get dogs used to ignoring them. The next layer of training is to acclimate the dog to noise and confusion. Whatever was happening around a dog, “the ultimate goal is to always stay focused on the trainer”, she said.
Best Supporting Actor nominee Ryan Gosling meeting the dog from Anatomy of a Fall and his heart skips a beat.@Variety @TheAcademy #Oscars pic.twitter.com/9TE9LeZPez
— Clayton Davis (@ByClaytonDavis) February 12, 2024
On a film set, maintaining that bond is challenging, because “there’s a lot of external stimulation” and the dog’s trainer is often forced to give commands from 10ft away. Her advice for training other dogs was simple: “It’s all about the treats,” she said.
Martin Contini has clearly elevated training into her own particular kind of art. On Messi’s big PR day, she had a sharp blonde bob and easy charisma, and had dressed in a dark jumpsuit, a ruffled blouse and Converse sneakers. When she took the actor on his periodic walk breaks, she put on a denim chore jacket, which made her look almost painfully French.
Despite Messi’s skill and intelligence, he struggled for years to break into the industry. Something about his look did not resonate. Martin Contini took Messi to audition after audition, but while he often made it to the last round, he was never picked. “He was the misunderstood artist,” she said.
To secure his breakout role in Anatomy of a Fall, Martin Contini and Messi went to “seven or eight” in-person auditions, including a chemistry test with Milo Machado-Graner, the young actor who plays Daniel.
Once Messi was cast in the role of Snoop, Martin Contini did two months of custom training. To prepare him for his crucial poisoning scene, Martin Contini started with the basics, “lying down, playing dead”, and then added additional layers, like “being able to be picked up and not reacting to that”.
One day, after Messi had been playing ball, he was tired and his tongue was hanging out. “Wow, that would really add to the scene,” she realized. “So he was trained to stick his tongue out and still not react.”
Messi spent a lot of time rehearsing with the human actors to build the kind of rapport that would make Messi truly seem like the family’s dog.
In one scene, Messi had to be trained to jump up on a bed with Muller and lie down next to her. In that moment, Justine Triet, the director, wanted Snoop to embody the dead husband returning to his wife’s side, Martin Contini said. It was a challenge: “How do you get the dog to be the spirit of Samuel?”
Messi struggled to book a role before “Anatomy of a Fall,” but that’s all over now that people have fallen for his performance. “He had one chance, and he gave it his all,” trainer Laura Martin Contini said. “He gets calls now. Because now he is a star.” https://t.co/vXtD2kALDA pic.twitter.com/TuwqCw0Zih
— IndieWire (@IndieWire) February 16, 2024
To allow Messi’s best work, she said, she “wants to give him the space to improvise”. She prepared Messi meticulously for the physical actions of the scene, but once he was there, she hid herself so Messi would be “fully with Sandra, having his own experience with her”.
“The intimate moment was born in that,” she said.
Staying humble
A few hours before I was scheduled to meet with Messi, I had Googled “how to interview a dog”. There wasn’t a lot of advice. A radio reporter cautioned that you must not give the dog the impression that your audio equipment is a toy. There were several videos of dogs licking or chewing on microphones.
I wasn’t the only one who was anxious. Maggie Bie-Grace, one of Messi’s PR reps, said she had received multiple emails from journalists ahead of his press day asking: “This is a stupid question, but … do I address the dog?”
We should not have worried: Messi had achieved his celebrity later in life, and he was a pro.
During a livestreamed news conference hosted by Jenelle Riley, an editor at Variety, Messi padded into the room, sniffed his interviewer gently and then rested his head on her knee. Presented with a cookie decorated to look like his face, he licked it.
Though she had interviewed Angelina Jolie and Leonardo DiCaprio, she had never been more starstruck than meeting Messi, Riley said, petting him intermittently. Messi, who mostly looked bored, lay on the floor, occasionally licking his paws as Riley asked his trainer questions about his career and how he’d relaxed on a day off in LA. (He went to Venice Beach, where he ran across the sand and played with other dogs, re-enacting his own version of Baywatch.)
Up next for Messi? A role on a French television series, in which “he died on camera –it’s become a speciality”, Martin Contini said.
The only time Martin Contini sounded stumped was when I asked her which human actor Messi most resembled. “His natural personality would be patient, yet vivacious, but highly intelligent. So maybe Brad Pitt?” she said through the translator.
I was not convinced: Brad Pitt was obviously a golden retriever. I asked friends which actor Messi reminded them of. Some said Elijah Wood, because of the big blue eyes, or Paul Rudd, because of his youthful good looks. I felt he was the dog version of Jake Gyllenhaal, though I cannot tell you why.
One compared Messi to Julia Fox, because of his uncanny energy and arthouse chops.
After his week in Hollywood, did Messi realize he is a celebrity? No, his trainer said: “He is totally unaware of his stardom.”
