Zoe Heran: French girl transforms into Tomboy

Youth Impact Report 2011: Bigscreen Kids Impact: The Berlinale discovery has been winning awards for her gender-bending role in Tomboy.Next: Heran is focused on school for now, but hopes to act again.

Youth Impact Report 2011: Bigscreen Kids

Impact: The Berlinale discovery has been winning awards for her gender-bending role in “Tomboy.”
Next: Heran is focused on school for now, but hopes to act again.

Imagine “Boys Don’t Cry” with 10-year-olds. In “Tomboy,” a girl uses her family’s recent move to reinvent herself as a boy to her new group of friends. Such a scenario would be challenging for any actress, but factor the character’s age into the equation, and it’s no wonder “Tomboy” has been collecting prizes on the fest circuit since its February debut in Berlin, where the film earned the GLBT-focused Teddy jury award.

Popular on Variety

Working on a tight deadline, director Celine Sciamma knew the film would work only if she found a child actress capable of pulling off the character’s transformation. “What I normally would have done is something we call ‘casting sauvage,’ which is searching in the streets, school theaters and so on. This time, I only had three weeks to complete the casting,” she says. “I spread the word that I was looking for a girl who looked like a boy, and the word came back that there was this special little girl who was not working much because she did not look like the others.”

Sciamma knew she’d found her tomboy when Zoe Heran came in for the first day of auditions, despite the fact the actress showed up with long hair and girlie clothes. “The thing I wanted but didn’t expect to get is how intense she is. That’s hard to picture for a kid. Even when she’s doing nothing, something is happening,” says Sciamma, who gave Heran a boyish haircut a month before shooting so the actress could start playing with her new identity. “To get the right performance, you have to make it all a big game, and that was really the spirit on the set.”

Read More About:

Jump to Comments

More from Variety

Most Popular

Must Read

Sign Up for Variety Newsletters

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. // This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Variety Confidential

A Variety and iHeartRadio Podcast

ncG1vNJzZmiukae2psDYZ5qopV9nfXJ9jp%2BgpaVfo7K4v46zpp5lmJq%2ForqMn6meppOdeqi10aVkraqRo8Cnu9Gmqmahnqm8bsDOppmosV1mfnKEj21rbWhhZA%3D%3D

 Share!