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Patrick Bauchau: Reel.com Hollywood Confidential

The State of Patrick

From Reel.com: Hollywood Confidential - September 6, 2000
by Jeffrey Wells

I tend to avoid actor interviews, but I was eager to sit down with Patrick Bauchau after meeting him a couple of weeks ago at a photo-gallery opening in Hollywood. Until then, being my usual lazy self, I hadn't paid sufficient attention. I had to ask a friend to tell me his name, despite the fact I've long admired Bauchau's acting and that refined, kindly, but faintly decadent European thing he tends to bring to the screen.

He's probably best known for his role as Sydney, the father-figure psychiatrist in the recently cancelled NBC hit series The Pretender. (It's now being produced on a limited basis by TNT, with two movie-length installments to be shot this fall.) Sydney is the suave mentor and trainer of the hero/protagonist, Jarod (Michael T. Weiss), who, like other "pretenders," has the ability to slip into fresh identities at the drop of a hat.

My favorite Bauchau performance came along when he played Mimi Rodgers' swinger boyfriend in Michael Tolkin's The Rapture (1991), which I've always regarded as one of the creepiest and scariest films ever made. He also appeared in Tolkin's The New Age ('94) with Peter Weller and Judy Davis.

He appeared all-too-briefly as a Colombian drug kingpin in Clear and Present Danger ('94), the superb Harrison Ford thriller directed by Phillip Noyce, who has a home close to Bauchau's in Hollywood's Whitley Heights district. I also enjoyed him as Zack Antoine in Alan Rudolph's Choose Me ('84). One of his personal favorites, he says, was his performance in Wim Wenders' The State of Things ('82).

His most recent appearance was in a small role in The Cell opposite Jennifer Lopez and Vince Vaughn. He says he's planning to shoot a film later this year called North Fork.

Born in Brussels and educated at Oxford, Bauchau's acting career started with a lead role in Eric Rohmer's La Collectioneuse (1967). I saw it last weekend for the first time on DVD. It's a Rohmer film, all right. It may have been screenwriter Alan Sharp's inspiration when he wrote the famous line for Arthur Penn's Night Moves ('75) that watching a Rohmer film "is like watching paint dry." Bauchau says the film got "hammered" by critics when it first came out.

For whatever reason, Bauchau quit acting during the '70s. Throughout the decade, he worked at various trades while living in Paris (one being a demolitionist, which he plied with a sledge hammer). The State of Things was his re-entry film and got things rolling again. Many of his films in the '80s and early '90s were European-produced. Bauchau speaks five or six languages.

I dropped by his home a few days after the photo-gallery meeting. The tall, gray-haired Bauchau exudes a certain Zen quality, one obviously unaffected or informed by the antsy Hollywood energy that permeates this town like invisible gas. I found him friendly in a blithe and unforced way. I decided then and there that Hollywood could use a lot more guys like Bauchau, guys with an elegant bohemian quality ... but not in the least bit snooty.

Bauchau shares his hillside abode with longtime partner Mijanou Bardot (sister of Brigitte). He's an avid gardener and yoga practitioner. He seems a bit shy when you first meet him.

A tallish woman with glasses was painting his kitchen a creamy peach color when I arrived for my visit last Friday. He has a huge, beautiful, multi-tiered flower garden in his back yard. I took the photo that you see while sitting with him in a patio area between two sections of his home. We were drinking Darjeeling tea.

Photo of Patrick Bauchau © 2000 by Jeffrey Wells. Do not use photo without prior, written permission. Click image to see a larger version in a new window.