Since December 5, 2017, Johnny Hallyday is gone. He leaves behind a great void. Among the people who miss him the most, there is necessarily his family but also his friends, including Jean Reno. The latter is also the godfather of his daughter Jade. On the occasion of the exhibition on Johnny Hallyday, which opened to the public on December 20, 2022 in Brussels, and which will arrive in Paris in January 2024, the actor agreed to answer questions from the Parisian, Monday January 2, 2023. So that he is the voice of the audio guide during the exhibition, he assured that he was on the verge of tears when he discovered Johnny Hallyday’s reconstructed office. For good reason, it was in this room that he saw the singer for the last time.
“I had a bad time… The office, that’s where I said goodbye to him. I touched his hand and said, ‘I’ll see you at Christmas.’ We are so helpless in front of someone who leaves. And who knows it. He looked at me and didn’t answer me… His hand was… strong and fragile, like him. He was capable of the most great strength and the greatest fragility. It was the beginning of December. Four days later, Laeticia called me, he was gone… When I saw him again, in the burning chapel, he was embalmed, in a box. It was violent! This guy who was so full of life …”, he confided, with a heavy heart.
Jean Reno and Johnny Hallyday met in a gym
Jean Reno remembered that his story of friendship with Johnny Hallyday was born thirty years earlier. “We went to the gym together wearing Maillot. I was starting to be known, I had done ‘le bleu’ (the film ‘Le Grand Bleu’, in 1988). We met, we took a photo and he said to me: ‘Come eat at home.’ It was in the 16th century. There were twenty people at the table! I told him: ‘It’s a surprise party!’, that made him laugh… Twenty was too much, you didn’t even know not who was there. It was before Laeticia. After there was more intimacy, “he said again, stars in his eyes. He is so happy and grateful to have been able to be part of the life of the owner.
Jean Reno and Johnny Hallyday © DANIEL ANGELI
