Edouard Philipponnat on going from life on a Finnish farm to acting opposite Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Napoleon’

Edouard Philipponnat speaks four languages – Finnish, Swedish, English and French. Notably missing, however, is Russian. So how did the French-Finnish actor find himself playing the Russian Tsar Alexander in Ridley Scott’s epic Napoleon opposite Joaquin Pheonix? “I’ll try to make a long story short,” he says when I reach him in the South of France (he’s there visiting his father. The sunshine streaming in through the window is enviable).

It all started when Philipponnat was cast in House of Gucci, Scott’s film detailing the tumultuous relationship between Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani. Initially, he had a rather notable role, playing a designer by the name of Giorgio Armani, but due to some “arguments” the role was cut back – way back. “The scene got quite a bit cut, I suppose, due to legal issues,” says Philipponnat, noting that his character’s name was eventually changed to something “random”. Production called him up and more or less said he was going to be a “glorified extra” – that they were sorry, they weren’t going to fire him but if he didn’t want to do it, that was cool too. “I said, ‘No worries, are you kidding me?’” he says. “This is a Ridley Scott movie – I would be a tree in it.” Plus, he got to work with Lady Gaga (“Oh, she was great – she was super, super nice,” he says). Though he was a little more starstruck by Adam Driver.

It wasn’t Ridley Scott’s last film. In fact, Philipponnat’s work on House of Gucci impressed the director so much that he invited the actor to audition for his upcoming project, which turned out to be Napoleon. “He sort of saw something and took a chance on me, I guess,” says Philipponnat. Soon he was going toe-to-toe with Pheonix, in full period attire. “It’s a ‘pinch-me’ moment,” he says of the experience. “I understand how lucky I am and how far away from this goal that I was when I started. Growing up in Finland, it didn’t seem very obtainable in my mind.”

Born in the south of France, Philipponnat grew up on a farm in a Swedish-speaking Finnish town just south of Helsinki. A child of divorce, he spent the majority of the year with his mum, a holistic healer, and summers with his dad, a diplomat based in Monaco. Each summer, his town hosted a summer theatre. “Even people from Helsinki would go – it was kind of a known thing with a huge stage that turned 360 degrees,” he says. A self-described “goofy kid” he always wanted to step on stage, but he never got the chance – summers were spent in France. But that’s where the “craving” began. For his 13th birthday, He asked his dad for a trip to Los Angeles so he could dip his toe in Hollywood, taking his very first acting class. Shortly thereafter he was cast as a young squire in Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer's Curse.

Related: Finnish actor Alma Pöysti reflects on the surreality of being nominated for a Golden Globe

As luck would have it, Philipponnat encountered Phoenix just before he stepped on set for Napoleon. Philipponnat was catching an early-access screening of House of Gucci at a theatre in Los Angeles (he wanted to make sure his scene hadn’t been cut before he told his friends and family to check it out). “I really had to go to the bathroom and I’m like five minutes away from my scene, so I decide to run,” he says. “And Joaquin is there. He was watching an indie movie he had done. He was taking a picture with someone.” Philipponnat, who had already been cast in Napoleon, considered going up to say hello. “I thought, ‘Oh, maybe I should go up and say, ‘Hey, I’ll see you at work’,’ Something cool like that.” Ultimately he decided against it, but he saw it as a good omen. Just as he stepped back into the House of Gucci screening, Philipponnat saw his own face on an Imax screen for the very first time. He met Pheonix a few weeks later, at rehearsals.

The first time Philipponnat saw Napoleon on the big screen, the circumstances were a little grander. It was the film’s global premiere in Paris, which took place just days after Hollywood’s actor’s strike was called off. “It was stressful and exciting and all of these emotions,” says Philipponnat, who spent the days and weeks leading up to the premiere “refreshing his phone” for updates on the strike. “The strike finished on Friday and the premiere was Monday.” Luckily he made it from Los Angeles to Paris just in the nick of time to walk the carpet in a Dior suit. It was a big to-do, with drummers and flags, press and screaming fans. When he finally sat down in the theatre, he was just “excited to see the movie”. “And then you remember you’re in it,” he says. He reckons he’s seen the film four or five times. That’s about 15 hours of Napoleon.

With Napoleon’s epic run about to reach its conclusion, Philipponnat is looking forward to the release of his upcoming film, Lost in Wonderland, a gritty reimagining of Alice in Wonderland in which he plays the Mad Hatter. In the meantime, he’s got plenty in the pipeline – TBD on the accent and language. “I was doing German the other day, I’ve done Italian, I had a meeting in Paris and I was doing French, and it was, like, old school French,” he says. “I speak French but memorising it is one thing and memorising 17th Century French is another thing. It messes you up a little bit.”