Guillaume Labbé

From the Scrum to the Film Set

Guillaume Labbé played professional rugby for Stade Français before acting crossed his path. In 2008, he decided to leave elite sports, moved to New York and studied acting at HB Studio. It was a risky decision that took him away from stadiums and into empty theater classrooms.

His first years in Paris were low-key. He worked in short films and accepted supporting roles in productions that barely made an impact. In 2012, he appeared in Do Not Disturb and shortly after in Gemma Bovery (2014). But French audiences still couldn't put a face to that burly guy who seemed too rough for romantic comedy.

Television gave him the final push.

In 2018, Plan Coeur premiered on Netflix. Playing Maxime put him on the radar of the European industry almost overnight. The series worked because its script treated its characters with a naturalness that is rare in the genre. Labbé went from unknown to a familiar face on screens in millions of homes.

Rejecting physical typecasting

Many directors wanted to draw on his sports background to cast him as a tough guy or a one-dimensional leading man. But he preferred projects with a denser psychological weight. In 2021, he starred in L'École de la vie, playing a teacher who must cope with a devastating personal tragedy. That shoot demanded twelve-hour days and a mental exhaustion the actor had not experienced until then.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2021, he also appeared in Je te promets, the French version of the American series This Is Us. There he played Michaël, a complex character that allowed him to move away from the athlete image for good. Filming of the first season stretched over several months and posed a major logistical effort for the production company Authentic Prod.

New Genres and 2024 Productions

The actor did not stop at traditional family drama. In 2022, he joined the cast of Parallèles, a Disney+ science fiction production that explored time travel and alternate universes. The shoot was marked by visual effects and a relentless work pace. In 2023, he filmed Escort Boys under the direction of Ruben Alves, a story set in the Camargue region.

Physicality stopped being the center of the script.

In 2024, he starred in the series Machine, where the tone of the storytelling became much darker and more political. It is a production that blends class struggle with martial arts sequences and required very specific technical preparation. That same year, he worked on L'Éclipse, a six-episode miniseries shot entirely in the landscapes of Aubrac.

The production budget for his 2024 projects exceeded eight million euros per season.