A true French icon, Arielle Dombasle has long suffered from being compared to a Barbie doll. But she managed to turn it into a strength, as she explains this Thursday, September 14 on the set of C à vous on France 5.
This Thursday, September 14, 2023, Arielle Dombasle was Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine’s guest on the show C to you on France 5.
The actress and singer came to present her new film, “The Secrets of the Princess of Cadignan”, which she is directing and in which she plays the role of a great seductress princess, a kind of feminine Dom Juan. Adapted from the work of Honoré De Balzac, this film is Arielle Dombasle’s fifth as director.
If today Arielle Dombasle is known and recognized for her talent, she had to fight to be taken seriously. With her pin-up physique and her little coquetry to hide her age, Bernard-Henri Lévy’s companion has long been compared to a Barbie doll, as Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine reminds her.
“For a long time I suffered from it”, confides Arielle Dombasle. Finally, the actress decides to take this comparison as a strength. “I thought no, I loved Barbie so much growing up. I took him as a little friend who follows me throughout life”, she says.
“Today Barbie is everywhere so it’s a little revenge”, then launches Babeth Lemoine, who refers to the film barbie directed by Greta Gerwig with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. The film is indeed a real hit at the box office and the Barbie doll has returned to the forefront in a spectacular way. So much so that two months after its release the film became the most profitable of 2023 with its 1.38 billion dollars at the American box office.
Barbie is therefore a reference and Arielle Dombasle has pushed the comparison very far. Last year, she released a tribute to the doll on YouTube with the clip “Barbiconic”. In this fun, very colorful and deliberately kitsch video, Arielle Dombasle highlights the iconic doll which has become, since its invention in 1959, a true pop culture reference.