For Arnaud Valois, the Second Time’s the Charm

In the past few years, the French actor Arnaud Valois has starred in films with festival premieres at Cannes and Sundance, shared the screen with Dan Levy and Nathalie Baye, and walked the red carpet of the Golden Globes and the César Awards. This fall, he appears in the fourth season of The Morning Show, the global hit series starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Not bad for a man who, fifteen years ago, quit acting.

“I stopped going to the movies. I stopped going to the theater. I needed a complete shutdown from everything,” he remembers. “It was not working the way I had imagined. I was depressed and, before I got bitter or made myself ill, I decided I’d had enough.” At the time, after finishing his training at a prestigious Parisian drama school and landing a promising string of supporting roles, opportunities dried up, rejections multiplied, and his mental health took a hit. The actor, then twenty-five, turned his back on his dream. “It was a choice, but not really. It was a need—for staying alive, for staying on the bright side,” he says of the decision. “I needed to start over.”

And start over he did: after dropping his agent, he moved to Thailand to become a massage therapist and sophrologist. That was the beginning of a seven-year journey during which he reset his relationship with happiness, with ambition, and, ultimately, with acting. “I proved to myself that I was able to do other things, that I could be someone without being an actor. That it was not the end,” he reflects, looking back on his time away. “Before, I thought that I would only be happy if I succeeded [with acting], but there are so many things that can fulfill you in very different, and maybe more authentic, ways.”

He had moved on, but life has a way. In 2016, director Robin Campillo came upon his Facebook profile while searching for “faces that looked like they were from the nineties.” Deemed to fit the bill, Valois was asked to audition for 120 BPM, a historical drama about the decade’s AIDS crisis in France. “I was reluctant,” the actor says of his initial impulse. “It took two years to let my dream go, and I had become very happy where I was. If it had been an ordinary movie, I would have said no,” he explains, “but when I read the audition scenes, I said, ‘Because it’s that story, because it’s my community, I’ll give it a try.’”

The risk paid off. 120 BPM was tough, kinetic, sensual; an unlikely mix of urgent fury and euphoric release; an unfamiliar retelling of repressed collective memories. It won the Grand Prix at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and the César Award for Best Film and became one of the year’s most resonant movies.

“After filming, I had gone back to my wellness practice. It’s when we went to Cannes that I realized the film was a phenomenon,” he remembers. “I understood that something was shifting.” Despite the film’s acclaim and his own rising star, Valois kept one foot out the door. “It took me almost a year to figure out if going back to the movies was the right thing for me. But, thanks to this film and thanks to the energy and the love I felt from people inside and outside of the industry, I finally thought, ‘Why not try?’”

The fairy-tale improbability of his way back is not lost on him. “It was a gift. Nothing was logical, nothing was meant to be,” he acknowledges of the opportunity not only to return to acting, but to do so with a project like 120 BPM. “You can have a great career without that kind of film, but when you have an experience that mixes art, meaning, politics, and this kind of reception by the audience, it’s really special. I don’t know if I will ever experience that again, but I made the most of it.”

Stepping into the spotlight on the back of a politically charged film and with the self-knowledge he gained during his hiatus emboldened Valois to publicly embrace his sexuality and political beliefs. “It was impossible for me to go back into the industry and pretend that I was not who I was,” he reasons. “Because the film was so political and raw, it was impossible for us to pretend that we were just actors telling that story.”

He is candid about his desire to continue telling queer stories and unconcerned with its potential cost. “Sometimes people ask me, ‘Do you think that if you were less outspoken, you would have access to more commercial projects in France?’ But this is who I am. For some people, it’s not a problem; for some, it’s a plus.” He deadpans: “The others, I don’t want to work with.”

Since 120 BPM, his credits have included 2023’s Good Grief, Dan Levy’s refreshing portrayal of grief co-starring Ruth Negga, Himesh Patel, and Levy himself, and last year’s lauded miniseries Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, in which he played Yves Saint Laurent alongside Daniel Brühl, in the titular role, and Théodore Pellerin.

He has also expanded his toolkit: he directed his first short, “Le nouveau moi,” in 2021; is in the financing stages for a second, due to shoot next spring; and has begun work on his first feature-length screenplay. Of his experience in the director’s chair, he says: “I think understanding all the questions, all the decisions, all the thoughts directors have to deal with has made me a better actor on a set. Sometimes it can feel like actors are in a different energy space as the technicians and the director,” he observes, “and I feel more part of the process now that I understand it better. I think that every actor should direct, even for two or three days.”

Up next for Valois is the fourth season of Apple TV’+s splashy newsroom drama The Morning Show, in which he plays the brother of Céline Dumont, a fiery network executive portrayed by Marion Cotillard. His time on the series was an unexpected, welcome whirlwind: “An actor dropped out, so they had to rewrite the end of the season. All they asked me was if I had a visa. I didn’t hear from them for ten days, and then I got an offer straightaway,” he recounts, still a little incredulous. “The next day, I had a call with the showrunner, and the next week, I was in L.A.”

Working on a large-scale Hollywood production was a new experience for the French actor—one not without its nerves. “I was very, very stressed before the first table read,” he admits, smiling. “It was my first time filming in the United States and in a big studio, but it felt very family-style. Everyone had been doing it for four seasons and they were very welcoming.”

The fast pace of creating a series centered on a news network also required some adjusting. “I was not expecting to know so little before filming,” he says of the down-to-the-wire approach to scripting. “The show is about news, so they want to stick to reality as much as possible. It’s a challenge, but it’s a very interesting way to work.”

Despite the formidable turnaround of his career, Valois holds the learnings and experiences of his time away from his craft close: he listens to his body; he commits to his wellbeing; and he leads an intentional, balanced life. “It doesn’t always come naturally, but I want, most of all, to be at peace with myself, so I work at it. It takes effort, but that’s the gift I give myself,” he says of his disciplined routine. “We tend to think in narrow timeframes, but this is a journey from zero to ninety years old, maybe. So take your time.”

The Morning Show continues on Wednesdays on Apple TV+.