Immorality may be fun, but it isn’t fun enough to take the place of 100% virtue and three square meals a day.

Design for Living, Ernst Lubitsch

Cinema found me. I didn’t go looking for it, but I couldn’t resist. One evening, while dining in a Paris restaurant, I was spotted by the casting director of the film Romuald et Juliette. She was looking for the woman to play opposite Daniel Au­teuil – a woman who wasn’t from the same social class and didn’t have the same skin colour – with whom he falls in love (albeit after several twists and turns). I was aston­ished because I wasn’t an actress …
I went on to play this Juliette on screen. She was a kind woman, a mother, a popular heroine. Looking back, I think that we needed those images. People of colour needed them. Children could rec­ognise themselves in Juliette’s children. It was good for people to be able to identify with these characters who were ordinary yet, at the same time, positive. The film came along partly to plug a gap, slake a thirst. At that time, when tensions about immigration were beginning to be felt, we were nowhere to be seen on screen …
I still see hurdles but little by little, we’re finding our place, with our ac­cents, our frizzy hair, our skin colour … More and more under the influence of American cinema, we’re trying to change mindsets, put a different stamp on a uni­form, monochrome world.

Firmine Richard, Une héroïne positive, in Noire n’est pas mon métier, edited by Aïssa Maïga, Seuil, Paris 2018