Jacky Ido is a “man of passions”: director, comedian, poet, slammer, actor… A lover of linguistics, this 45-year-old Franco-Burkinabè has established his career in international cinema. Appeared in the films of the greatest, Jacky Ido has nevertheless remained rooted in the suburbs of his childhood, while remaining devoted to his ultimate passion: writing.
When he arrives at café 104, one of his headquarters in his town of Saint-Ouen, Jacky Ido displays a big smile, his eyes sparkling. The 45-year-old actor is bursting with energy when less than two days ago he played the last of Racine’s play, Berenice, at La Scala (Paris 10th), after more than seven months of performances and hard work. ” I’ll get sick for a few days now “, he launches with a joking smile.
It must be said that Jacky never stops. He is bubbling with ideas, desires, preparing a thousand projects at the same time. The Franco-Burkinabe actor still has a role to play. A text to write. A slam scene to animate. With this mantra in mind that his father preached to him: When you want to do something, you do it all the way or not at all. »
Growing up between Ouagadougou and Stains
Seated at this café of die-hard Audonians, where he has organized a number of slam evenings, Jacky feels at home here. He proudly points to the expression inscribed on his electric blue shirt, at the level of the heart: “Brooklynafaso”. ” It’s my little country “, he quips. A beautiful summary of his identity. ” This term embodies the hybridization of my origins. It is the fact of having my Burkinabè DNA, modified by my Stanoise DNA and the American, Japanese, German influences, which make me who I am today. “, he says.
Because Jacky’s story is a story of multiple affiliations. At the same time a foot in Burkina Faso, where he spent several years of his childhood, then a foot in Stains in Seine-Saint-Denis, with his mother and his little brother. Born in what was still Upper Volta in 1977, Jacky spent six years in France, then returned to Burkina Faso in 1983. At the same time, Thomas Sankara leads his coup. ” We experienced the change of name of the country, the regime, the revolution… It was a Burkina in such turmoil, with innovative ideas everywhere “, he remembers.
Jacky spends her primary in this maelstrom and is immersed in an intense audiovisual culture. ” At the time, we all gathered around a football match or a movie. Even at the cinema, there was a lot of enthusiasm in the public. It fascinated me. » Jacky developed a passion for writing very early on. With his friends, the actor talks about films, forges his way of telling stories, reinvents scenarios. ” Without knowing it, it was great training to become a director! he exclaims.
Back in Stains in 1987, Jacky continued to nurture her love of literature, then cinema. He gobbles up hours of film and proudly records hundreds of films for his father. ” The neighborhood culture is a culture of verbal jousting, fascinated by gangster films. In general, the cinema lives a lot in the imagination of the people of the city “, he assures. Little by little, Stains becomes his village “.
The words pegged to the body and the heart
In Stains, Jacky tries to satisfy her thirst for learning. His almost bulimic need to discover new things. To brave his overwhelming shyness. ” Speaking was intolerable to me “, he admits. A discreet, introverted kid. An image almost impossible to conceive when seeing today this man with an imposing build, an easy smile and such an infectious laugh.
His modesty and his embarrassment, it was the slam that defeated them. ” For me, the slam represents the moment when Jacky, who writes for his drawer and makes films for his room without ever daring to show anything, comes across a slam scene and takes a slap in the face of seeing people daring to say what keeps him buried he breathes with raw honesty. Jacky handles rhymes, scribbles text after text, attends dozens of open scenes. Then one day, in 2002, flanked by his two friends Fabien and Sami, also passionate about prose and basketball, he wrote a few lines and decided to throw himself into the great void. His first slam scene. Standing ovation. ” At that moment, something happened to me. It changed everything. »
Jacky then adopted the pseudonym of John Pucc’Chocolat, Fabien that of Grand Corps Malade and Sami became the Count of Bouderbala. They launch the Slam Aleykum collective, embody this band of friends, full of dreams, aware of their social conditions but for whom everything seems possible. With great ambitions and projects full of pockets, they sum up with simplicity the audacity that drives them in ” It can go wrong! (2006): “ Whatever the fields: social, cultural or in sport / We had to try our luck, we couldn’t be wrong / From the most eccentric ideas to the most tangible projects / Were we simply stubborn, nothing seemed inaccessible. »
This catharsis through writing, Jacky wishes to pass it on to young people. He invests in the engine project! which offers 14-22 year olds the opportunity to make a short film, and leads slam workshops. ” Before reciting the texts they write, I always tell them: “Brave your fear, you’ll see, it’ll set you free” “, he says. Because for him, slam does not judge, and on the contrary, words heal. Since February 2023, the Audonien has also been organizing an open stage, entitled Scala Maleikum in tribute to his youth collective and his pen partners, every second Monday of the month at the bar de la Scala in Paris (the next scene will take place on March 13, 2023).
International actor
Curious, Jacky Ido first started his film career behind the camera, and set up small, unpretentious projects as a director. Then by dint of work, Jacky is spotted. In 2005, he won the first role of a Maasai warrior in The White Massai, a German production. For five months, he undertakes colossal work, learns German, Swahili and Maa, follows physical training, immerses himself in the life of the Samburu peoples in Kenya with whom he tours.
” As they came to pick me up, I was under a lot of pressure. I wanted to show the team that they were right about their casting. So I went through this shoot being the bearer of the word of the Samburu. When they validated me, that’s what gave me my legitimacy and helped me feel less like an impostor. “, he confides. When it was released, the film made three million admissions in Germany.
In 2009, consecration: Jacky interprets Marcel in Inglorious Basterds by Quentin Tarantino. Chameleon actor, he connects the productions and collaborates as well with Claude Lelouch as Jonathan Cohen in the recent series The torch (2022). He is exported to Germany, the United States, joins the cast of Taxi Brooklyn in 2014 and varies its repertoire. ” I am always super grateful for the opportunities that come my way. And at the same time a little hallucinated to work with the directors I studied as a child ! »
Despite his successes, Jacky refuses to be singled out, to be put on a pedestal. ” When I’m in a position to help authors achieve their visions, I give 400%. I gained confidence in my practice little by little. But I also realized that I was living the dream of a lot of people, and I think I apologized too much for that. “, he reveals with a slight smile.
To continue to enrich his artistic palette, he made his stage debut in 2022. On the poster for the French theater monument: Berenice, alongside Carole Bouquet. He embodies, with finesse, Antiochus. ” Acting in the theater is what reconciles the slam guy, the poetry writer, and the actor. Because Racine is one of the greatest slammers in France, and it’s wonderful to be able to carry this word on stage. »
An authentic in the middle of the eccentrics
For Jacky, the question of his legitimacy follows him everywhere, with each new project. He knows he doesn’t fit the mold of Hollywood stardom, but whatever. The Audonian does not forget where he comes from. ” When I came back from three months in a luxury hotel, Sami came to pick me up and he always took me past the city blocks, to the neighborhood Greek sandwich shop. He said nothing, he just liked to see my face as I came back to reality “, he recalls.
Because as his career takes off, Jacky also flies away: in Berlin, in the United States, in Japan… But his ties remain and always remain in his suburbs of the North of Paris. This is why at the birth of his first son, in 2013, the actor put down his suitcases in Saint-Ouen, ” to give his children the same basis as him “. The pride of his past, of having freed himself from a social determination, which sticks to his skin.
” Abroad, the gaze they had on me was not the same gaze of marginalization that they had in France on young people from the housing estates. But as soon as I returned home, I wanted to show people from the suburbs, like me, that it was possible to go further, to jump higher. In this environment that worships eccentrics, Jacky sells the authentic. Of humility. ” Many people took me for a simpleton, found me too naive. But I assume. I never believed that our identity is made when we look in a mirror. It starts in meetings. “So to the kid that he was, the one who knew how to brave his fears and take his texts out of his drawer, he has only one thing to say to him: remain generous and continue to dare.
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