Fanny Bastien - The call of the wild

It is fitting that three planetary fire signs were aligned when German-born Fanny Bastien entered this world. Fanny’s biography below details the extraordinary life of this French-speaking actress and performer.

When she was just 14 and a half, Fanny left her family and home, supported by her friends and loved ones, on a quest to find out what her role and mission on this earth might be. Fanny was looking for a ‘renaissance’, a re-birth; to forge a new life for herself and complete her education in the ‘school of life’. The only element missing was how to go about achieving this. To prepare herself for this metaphysical journey, Fanny took with her three books that she deemed essential - a book by Jack London, another by Carson MacCullers, and Theodore Sturgeon’s work, The Healing Crystal. These books were to travel everywhere with her.

After some time spent seemingly ‘moving forward without knowing exactly where I was headed’ and trying her hand at various small jobs, Fanny found what she was looking for in the form of a regional dance school. She tried for the entrance exam, was accepted, and stayed for a year. Finally in complete harmony with herself, Fanny appeared in several performances, discovering the very physical work demanded by dance, and enjoying her new awakening to this art form. For Fanny, a natural progression from dance was to the Fratellini circus school. "It was a childhood dream", explains Fanny, "Dancing on a high wire above the whole world…it was like a bridge that linked me to the universe.”

Several other artistic projects followed until Fanny discovered the theatre. She earned her stripes alongside Vera Greg, John Strasberg and Jack Waltzer. Fanny was later welcomed into the famous Théâtre du Lucernaire in Paris where she appeared in a play by the young writer Jean Marc Lonval. The next exciting move came after a meeting with the surrealist writer and producer Arrabal, who gave her a role in his film « Le cimetière des voitures ». Following that, Fanny was spotted by Jacques Fansten, who offered her the chance to star in« Dorothée danseuse de corde », a television film adapted from the novel by Maurice Leblanc that tells the story of a circus tightrope dancer who dances on a wire that stretches across the world.

The realm of theatre and cinema is a world Fanny is totally at home in. Following these first forays into cinema, her career evolved as though charmed, as she found herself making one film after another. Fanny successfully navigated between art house and mainstream cinema, starring with French actors Gérard Jugnot, Richard Berry and Bernard Giraudeau. On an international level she worked alongside Anthony Quinn, Donald Sutherland, Yurgen Prochnov, Robert Powell, Patrick Fierry, Annie Girardot, Mika Kaurismaki, Jacques Doillon, Brahim Staki and Edouard Niermance (see filmography for more details). At the start of her cinematic career, Fanny’s choice of roles was very diverse, and tended towards characters on the edge of society - extreme, vivid characters. “It’s my way of talking about these people and showing my appreciation for them” explains Fanny. As Tolstoy famously expressed, ‘the true mission of the artist is to enable Man to love life in all its facets’.

In person, Fanny is animated and lively. Her face is luminous and she has an inner clarity. She retains something childlike about her, and, like a teenager, she is prone to bursts of laughter. When questioned, she speaks philosophically about her life, painting an intriguing picture of how she likes to live, “I sleep on a map of the world, I sleep on rolls of film, I sleep on stage…I sleep on a bed of rosemary. I walk each day, I love listening to sounds, to the trees.” When asked about the cinema and acting she replies, “… [For me they represent many things] emotion, space, light, innovation, and communication. [Acting] is a profession I love because it’s my life and one that I’ve chosen. I can be both musician and conductor.”

Later in life Fanny was inspired to created a space for artistic expression and creation, a space where artists could meet, for art, theatre, and artistic ‘happenings’. Called ‘Damned’, the hip hangout was originally conceived for her close Berber friend and stylist, Najet.

In 1988, just before the Perestroika, Fanny travelled to Moscow to promote « Poussière d’ange », a film by Edouard Niermance (Prix ROMY SCHNEIDER). Whilst abroad, she fell in love with Russia and with a Russian man. What followed this trip was an overwhelming silence that was to last for seven years. During this time Fanny travelled, crossing the planet like a migrating bird. Fanny reappeared in the artistic milieu, disappeared, and little by little, distanced herself from France.

In 1994 Fanny returned to her home country and became involved with Denis Sellem, a friend and founder and president of the Edouard Kalifat association for humanitarian research, an organisation supported by the International Federation of the League for Human Rights (F.I.D.H.) that was mandated to find missing people - soldiers, members of the resistance, deportees - that had disappeared in the former USSR. Today Fanny is a member of the Honorary Committee of the association. In 2001, Fanny left for Russia once again, undertaking research on a celebrated early-20th century Russian revolutionary. Such a move was not unusual for Fanny, who has a passion for sociology, ethnology and the indigenous peoples that she claims to be a part of. She explains her interest thus: “I live life like a maiden voyage. My work as an actor channels me, and constantly awakens me to what it is to be human. My work also incites me to respect my life and that of others a little more. If I take time out from the stage and the artistic way of life for a while, it is so I can come back improved, and bring something else, another dimension, to my work.

Fanny is also philosophical about her role in this life and says of her birth, “When the big ‘moment of light’ came, I like to think it was as though I was propelled like a meteorite into a dark forest. I owe a lot of my character to my mixed blood – I am the great grand-daughter of a manual labourer and that’s something I always remind myself of; it’s something that I cherish and which is very important to me. My name, Bastien, is like a ‘bastion’, a fortress… [Maybe that’s where my strength comes from]. But above all, I am a child of Nature.”