At the beginning of February, Xavier Dolan announced that Jessica Chastain (3) would not appear in her next feature film, "My life with John F. Donovan". The reason ? The role of the actress - a nasty queen of the media - no longer corresponded to the stakes of storytelling. This "extremely difficult choice", according to the Quebec director, meets artistic criteria.

In Hollywood, as elsewhere, this practice has long been used. The champion in this area? The filmmaker Terrence Malick, who has noticeably cut the performances of Rachel Weisz (in "A la merveille"), Christian Bale and Benicio Del Toro ("Song to Song"), Sean Penn ("The Tree of Life") or Adrien Brody, one of the main roles of "The Red Line", reduces to a stammering appearance. Nicknamed "the cutter", Malick now drags the reputation of director who accumulates prestigious castings but prefers to film the wind in the trees and the flight of birds. But he is not the only one, and many are the directors to be customary of this use: Spielberg, Tarantino, Oliver Stone ... Recently, it took a new turn with the case Kevin Spacey : accused of sexual assaults , the star of "House of Cards" (1) was completely erased from "All the money of the world", Ridley Scott's latest film, and then replaced at short notice by Christopher Plummer. The suppression of actor would it become a matter of morality? In France, the comedian Franck de Lapersonne disappeared from the film Fabrice Eboué, "Coexister", because of his political coming out alongside Marine Le Pen.

Missed scenes

In the ruthless lottery of actors cut in editing, there are also, sometimes, scenes that we imagine missed. Announced in the credits of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes, Gilles Lellouche has not reached the stage of rushes; the actress Audrey Fleurot, who was to appear in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris", was eclipsed by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy ; As for Nabilla's (2) performance in the fifth season of "Orange is the new black", she was downgraded to the rank of "bonus", posted by the former reality show candidate on her Twitter account. Where she is the only director.