Cannes Hunk: Tom Mercier Wows Red Carpet with Impressive Hand Stand

Israeli actor Tom Mercier showed his athletic prowess at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday, May 18, when pulled off a hand stand at the red carpet. The 29-yea-old actor, best-known to American audience for his ongoing role on Luca Guadagnino's HBO series "We Are Who We Are" in 2020 when his full-frontal scene blew up the internet.

Mercier was on the red carpet to promote one of his two new films: "The Animal Kingdom," which got a strong positive response from critics after its premiere. Mercier's athleticism on the runway is reflected in Thomas Cailley's genre mash-up in which he plays a man mutating into a bird after a mysterious virus infects France creating similar transformations. "Mercier gives a startling, athletic performance as ornithologically-enhanced fugitive Fix," writes critic Jonathan Romney on the website Screen Daily. Also praising Mercier (and the film) is Another standout is Tom Mercier as Fix, a fellow hybrid that Émile befriends on his journey to becoming his real self, and who gives us a powerful scene that shows us just how instantly empowering the love and support of others can be."

Mercier's second film, "The Beast in the Jungle," premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year. Directed and co-written by Austrian Patric Chiha, the film is a free adaptation of Henry James 1903 short story transplanted to the late 20th century and early 21st. Mercier plays a solitary man with a secret who meets a young woman, May (Anaïs Demoustier), in a Paris dance club. Promised that she will share an event -- "something bigger than us, something absolute" – that will change their lives, they become a couple. "Mercier imbues John with a stilted, beguiling physicality and a constantly vacant stare, while Demoustier is magnetic as the seductive May (with great gowns, beautiful gowns to boot)," writes Marina Ashioti on the website Little White Lies. And in a review at IonCinema, Nicholas Bell adds: "Mercier, in his first major role since leading Nadal Lapid's exceptional 'Synonyms.' is boyishly frustrating, while the effervescent Anais Demoustier is a martyr of her own makin

Whether or not Mercier strips down in either of these films isn't known, but he did in playing an army major on Guadagnino's mini-series. Jonathan Kritchevsky, his character, is an Israeli/American soldier stationed on an Italian army base in 2016 who shamelessly flirts with teenage Fraser Wilson Jack Dylan Grazer) while showering in the first episode. The image of Mercier in the shower takes hold on Grazer as the two pursue a casual friendship. (Click here for the NSFW pic.)

But Mercier is no stranger to film nudity, as evidenced by the 2019 French film "Synonyms" in which he played an Israeli man who moves to Paris to escape his homeland. In the film, he has three NSFW scenes.(curated from Mr. Man.com). In one he takes a shower where he strokes himself; in a second, he walks around an apartment naked while being watched by a woman; and the third (and most provocative), he has a photoshoot with a demanding photographer who instructs him (amongst other things) to stroke himself.

In discussing his work with director Nadav Lapid (which one the Golden Bear at Berlin)for Flaunt Magazine, Mercier said" "He never gave me borders to work but he was very precise when he wanted something in regards to the camera. He wanted the actor to be in a way unaware of the camera, like when I cross the camera sometimes I can push the camera. He wanted it so that even if there were times when the photographer was scared of me, i would not be scared of the camera. He wanted me not to respect the camera, not to give a shit about the camera, shake the camera, break the camera."

He added that he had one attitude to the character: fearlessness. "Because for me the most difficult thing in life is to live without fear and I think through this character I learn not to be intimidated by anything. Im accepting the fear, and I'm letting him come into my mind, into my bones, its becoming one platform."

Check out pics from his IG: