This Interview was edited for lenght and clarity.
There’s a real intensity to French actor Benjamin Voisin—a performer who, even in conversation, seems unable to sit still for more than two seconds. Our Zoom conversation a couple of weeks ago was peppered by his constant smoking and his insistence of conversing in English despite admitting to not being completely fluent. His amiability is in direct contrast with the emotionally detached protagonist at the centre of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, now reimagined for the screen by acclaimed filmmaker François Ozon.
Voisin first broke through in French cinema with Ozon’s Summer of 85, and has since built a reputation for choosing complex, interior roles. In this latest collaboration, he steps into one of literature’s most philosophically elusive characters — a man defined as much by what he does not feel as by what he does.
Voisin’s journey into the film began not with the novel itself, but with another idea entirely. “First of all, we had another movie in mind before,” he explains, describing a project centred on “a young guy who didn’t want to accept the society games and didn’t want to let someone decide what he has to be.” It’s a theme that, in hindsight, feels closely aligned with the existential detachment of Camus’ protagonist.
The shift came suddenly. “One day, François came to me and said, ‘I’ve just finished reading The Stranger… that can be something.'” Voisin read it immediately. “And then one week after, he already had a first draft for me.” The speed of that process might seem surprising, but for Voisin, the key was not the draft itself, but the philosophy behind it.
“I trusted François for that,” he says. “Because he already knew that to adapt is to betray… you have to bring your own personality and your own vision of the novel.”
That idea — adaptation as transformation rather than preservation — became central to both the film and Voisin’s performance. The character at its centre is notoriously difficult to grasp: emotionally distant, seemingly indifferent, and resistant to the kinds of psychological cues that audiences are used to reading.
Yet for Voisin, the challenge was not about removing emotion, but redirecting it. “Everybody said to me how difficult it was to not feel anything,” he recalls. “And that’s strange, because this is probably the movie I felt the most confortable in.”
“I was so quiet… so I did have a lot of time to watch things really, truly into my soul,” he says.
“I found some beautiful and sad German philosophy, like Schopenhauer,” he explains. “He did an essay…The Art of Happiness.” The irony is not lost on him. “He killed himself one year after,” Voisin adds. “So… it’s very cheerful.” He laughs lightly, before admitting, “I became very quickly depressive.”
Ozon’s reaction was, characteristically, understated. “François said to me, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing, but you’re doing it right. Don’t move. Stay like this, and I’m going to shoot the movie.'”
The film itself was shot not in Algeria, where the novel is set, but in Morocco. For Voisin, the experience of working abroad became part of the creative process. “They found a beautiful location,” he says, recalling four weeks spent in Tangier.
It was also a shift in perspective. “That was one of the first movie I did in another country, with another culture, other people,” he explains. “And that was probably easier for me to find the way to express this character.” The unfamiliar environment, it seems, mirrored the character’s own sense of disconnection.
Even within the production, a kind of distance was carefully maintained. Voisin describes how Ozon encouraged him to remain separate from the rest of the cast. “François asked me to be with myself and to just dream and think about other things than the scene we are doing right now.”
This approach was reinforced by a single piece of direction that Voisin describes as decisive. “Three months before shooting, he gave me some sentences,” he says, recalling a distinction between two types of screen presence. “The first one is to be an actor… the second one is to be a model.”
He elaborates: “The actor is going to act, is going to build something around him. The model— is just going to live through, and will not care about the movement of the camera.” For this role, Ozon was unequivocal. “If you act in front of my camera for this character, we’re going to have big problems.”
Voisin took that instruction literally. “So I was with me, myself, and I in my own world,” he says. It’s a description that echoes the interiority of Camus’ novel, where meaning is often found not in action, but in perception.
Despite the intensity of the role, Voisin speaks about his career with a notable sense of humility. When told that he is increasingly in demand in France, he responds simply: “That’s lovely to hear.” He resists the idea of control or strategy. “I don’t think actors choose the character they’re doing.”
For him, the goal is not to shape a career, but to remain open to collaboration. “I really want to be involved into the dreams of the French directors,” he explains. It’s a sentiment that reflects his experience with Ozon — one built on trust, patience, and a shared willingness to take risks.
Asked about future ambitions, he points to filmmakers within French cinema, including Leos Carax and Jacques Audiard. “There are a lot,” he says, noting the strength of the current landscape. At the same time, he remains open to working internationally. “I would love to do an English movie,” he adds.
That sense of patience — of allowing things to unfold rather than forcing them — runs through everything Voisin says about his work. It’s there in his approach to acting, in his relationship with directors, and in his understanding of The Stranger itself.
Rather than trying to explain the character, or impose meaning onto him, Voisin chooses to inhabit the uncertainty. He does not push for clarity where the text resists it. Instead, he leans into stillness, into observation, into the space between feeling and expression.
And in doing so, he captures something essential — not just about the character, but about the nature of performance itself.
