"I was homosexual": Charles Berling confides unvarnished about his love life

Solène Delinger 14:28 pm, March 15, 2023

Charles Berling never liked labels. The 64-year-old actor prefers not to consider himself gay, heterosexual or bisexual. Invited in the show En Aparté Tuesday, March 14, 2023 to promote the mini-series Les siffleurs, in which he plays, the actor has long poured out about his love life.

"Some actors didn't want to do it because it touches on homosexuality"

Asked about the highlights of his career and in particular his role in the film Dry Cleaning, released in 1997 and directed by Anne Fontaine, Charles Berling explained how this feature film found a particular resonance in him. "When the director introduced me to the film, she told me that there were other actors who didn't want to do it because it touches on homosexuality," he recalled. "And I didn't understand why we refused such a role." Charles Berling did not hesitate for a single second before agreeing to play in the film.

"I practiced it in a concrete way"

"What was beautiful in this scenario was that we see that homophobia often comes from homosexuals themselves," he explains in En Aparté. "Finally, people who have natural homosexual impulses, and who reject them because of culture, education, or because it scares them [...] Coincidentally, homophobes are often people who are attracted to homosexuality." Charles Berling was also attracted to homosexuality. "I had a homosexual period, now I'm not," says the one who is now in a relationship with actress Pauline Cheviller.

Charles Berling says he understood that sexuality "is not on the one hand the feminine identity, and on the other the masculine identity". "In social debates, young people talk a lot about gender, I've experienced that a lot. I practiced it in a concrete way, that is to say to be both feminine and masculine. A sex moves in life," he says.

"Let's not make it a moral thing, a convention"

The actor has never had any problem talking about his love life. In 2018, in the show Je t'aime, etc, he revealed that he had nearly 200 adventures in his life: "Does it seem like a lot? I didn't really count actually. But there were different periods when over a year I may have slept with 25 people so... After that, it's what you want to live that counts. Let's not make it a moral thing, a convention."