On January 1, 2023, Salma Hayek looked her in the eyes and gave her some advice: “Iman, your last name is Pérez and you look Mexican or Spanish: start learning Spanish now and find an agent in Spain.” She achieved the second and the first is still going. The twenty-year-old is fulfilling the prophecy that her sister’s father made when she approached her family after attending a school function. “This girl,” Gérard Depardieu announced to them, “she is going to be an actress.” They already knew it. That was the only thing Iman repeated when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. They insisted that she be patient. Someone like her couldn’t jump at any opportunity. The daughter of director and actor Vincent Pérez and screenwriter Karine Silla, in whose latest joint film, An affaire d’honneur, participates, he had to choose his works with caution. Accumulating lines on your resume, in your case, would not give you prestige.
She was aware. For Iman, she admits, mediocrity will not be tolerated. “If you are already known, the criticism will be more severe. You have to give 110%. Someone who is not can stay in the 80%. It is mentally exhausting to have to justify yourself all the time. When I was little it was very hard for me. That’s why I wanted to wait until I had more training as an actress. “I wanted to be very prepared.” Words nepo baby, that is, “daughter of”, come out alone from her lips. She is bothered by the selective nature of the phenomenon, that the magnifying glass seems to focus only on the offspring of artists. “You do what you know. It happens in all industries. I think the difference is being famous. No one gets upset when a dentist inherits his father’s practice. It seems unfair to me. But, in any case, Tarantino is not going to choose you because you are the daughter of who knows who. You must be good. Nobody wants to destroy his movie because the lead actor doesn’t know how to act.” He admits, however, the advantages of inherited popularity. He opens doors and intercepts attention. “It helps because you know more people, but I don’t know, I’ve also spent weeks where I didn’t have money to pay for my food or the horses. “If it were that easy, I would have already made 15 films.”
Those horses he had to feed made sure he stayed on the catwalk. Fashion campaigns financed his hours of riding and trips to jumping competitions. It was the sport that, after giving up tennis, skiing or ballet, he had finally decided to commit to. “If I start something I have to try to reach the highest level. Without them she would not have learned to be so organized with time and money. When I was 15, my parents told me: ‘Iman, if you want to continue with this, you’re going to have to pay for it yourself.’ I stopped riding for six months, I worked hard, I called every possible brand suggesting they sponsor me and I found two that have been with me until my last competition, in the pandemic.” The schedules had become incompatible. Someday, he hopes, he will return to jumping. He misses the animals, but without a goal, he adds, the fun disappears.
He came to the cameras from Saint Germain. “At the La Société restaurant, [el fotógrafo] Peter Lindbergh was sitting at a nearby table and my father went to greet him. I said ‘hello’ from my seat because I was embarrassed and he asked what modeling agency he worked with because he wanted to take photos of me. I thought: ‘Typical, he said it, but he’s not going to do it.’ But he did it. And then Paolo Roversi photographed me. I have here [enseña la muñeca] a pet tattooed by them.” Then the fun was at home. She traveled through Mexico or Canada to accompany his father on filming and at the international school he attended in Paris, his classmates rotated frequently. Brothers and cousins formed the core of his gang. And the building they lived in. They shared a portal with their uncles, the producer Virginie Silla and the director Luc Besson. “Something African about us is that we are very family-centered. We don’t spend much time apart and if they invite us to something, we’ll all be there.”
Through the genealogical tree of the Pérez Silla family, rooted in France, Swiss, German, Senegalese and Spanish blood runs. “We grew up speaking English, but we all know German and French. My father and I are the most Spanish. We have bread and tomato for breakfast and of my brothers I am the only one who speaks Spanish. Before I went to Valencia to train and now, to see my grandfather. In Senegal, where my mother is from, we spend one month a year.” Countries, cultures, languages, arts swirl in her biography.
Her origin, her work as an actress and, she suspects, the harmony in the conception of elegance, casual and natural, have caught the attention of Chanel, for whose fall-winter 2023-2024 pre-collection she gives face and attitude. She paraded for the house in Dakar and Dubai, where he met Virginie Viard, creative director of the firm. When she doesn’t have to work, she watches, as an ambassador, the shows from the front row. In 2021 she became one of the protagonists of The Chanel Iconic, the short about the 11.12 bag directed by Sofia Coppola. She would like to put herself in front of the camera again. She also compared to Baz Luhrmann’s. Of Moulin Rouge, He assures, he can “write the script from memory.” In that Nicole Kidman she found her starting line and in Angelina Jolie, her finishing line. “She has an Oscar, but she is a brilliant actress and that is why she has forgotten that her father also won one. Nepo baby It doesn’t mean you won’t have talent. “I also want to show what I’m made of.”
CREDITS
Styling: Juan Cebrian
Makeup and hair: Raquel Alvarez for Chanel
Manicure: Sylvie Vacca (Call My Agent)
Local production: Candice Carcaillon (error404production)
Production: Christina Serrano
Photography assistant: Mark Fournier
Styling assistant: Aina Marco
Makeup assistant: Austria Jordan
Production assistant: Anastasia Honcharova (error404production)
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