Félix Maritaud – Called the 'Hottest Young Actor on the Planet' – Wants to Shed Light on Serious Gay Health Crisis

Out actor Félix Maritaud�has made his mark in French cinema over the past few years, most notably in the 2017 AIDS drama "B.P.M.," which was his debut. The French gay magazine TÊTU labeled him "the new hero of French queer cinema,"�reported the Irish Times in 2019.

Two years later, he won the Lumières Award�for�Most Promising Actor�for his performance in�"Sauvage," where he played a homeless sex worker in Paris subjected to such humiliations that there were walkouts when the film premiered at Cannes in 2019.

"You don't have to have attended last year's Cannes film festival to know that Félix Maritaud is the hottest young actor on the planet, but it would not have hurt," the Irish Times added.

His next French film role is in "L'ennemi" ("The Enemy"), due out in January. He also has a lead role in the upcoming horror film "You Are Not Alone," starring Noomi Rapace that finished shooting last December, but has yet to announce a release date.

"I want to make films," he tells TÊTU, adding that while he's writing a script to a film that he says will be "expensive," he wonders out loud if he shouldn't "be doing a super trashy chemsex short film before then?"�

The reason for his wanting to make a "chemsex" film is simple: "to sound the alarm bells about drug use in a sexual context, more and more widespread in certain gay circles," writes TÊTU.�

"It's a plague," he�explains.�"You have guys who die every month. I would like to make a film about it because I have experienced it myself. It is a space of the homosexual community of which you have to make images and on which you have to build a statement. You cannot leave that in the shade. We must shed light on it."

TÊTU adds that there have been few works that explore the subject, such as�"Chemsex," William Fairman's documentary released in 2015, or the book�"Chems"�by Johann Zarca, published by Grasset this year.�

Another out writer and director is also interested in the subject – Russell T. Davies, who wrote the original "Queer as Folk" and, more recently, "It's a Sin," who told TÊTU last winter: "It's a subject that fascinates me, and it's too bad there hasn't been a real chemsex series yet. Give me some time and I'll get down to it."

Check out these pics from Maritaud's IG: