Paris: Messi, star of the Oscar-winning film Anatomy of a Fall, which won last year’s top prize at Cannes, will return to the festival next week as a red carpet interview for the stars.
Using a special 360-degree microphone and a camera on its back, the Border Collie will talk to the stars with the help of actors behind the scenes.
Comedian Rafael Mezrahi said: “He’s a star… I just gave him my vote.”
The resulting short clips will be on the French and TikTok channels.
Messi won the Palme d’Or for best performance in a film at Cannes for his role in Anatomy of the Fall. She then set social media alight when she was photographed with the likes of Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Billie Eilish during her Oscar campaign.
He proved his acting chops: in one scene in the film, he experienced the emotions of being drunk and vomiting.
Coach and owner Laura Martin said it took two months of training, when Messi learned to “raise his body a lot” to shock his neck and render him unconscious.
Fasama vomited out of the tube under his mouth. “He didn’t like it,” Martin said.
But he had fun during a recent AFP visit to his home.
Swapping sausages, he struck a variety of poses – hat on the nose, frozen, panting camera – as he recorded a message for stars like Emma Stone, who will star in Blood in his new movie Kind kindness”.
“People say to me, ‘Messi would be nice to rest in his garden,’ but he forgets his garden.
A dog trainer, he fell into the world of film by accident, never dreamed it would “take off like this”.
Messi, named after the footballer, was rejected in the past by one of Martin’s children for being “too pretty and taking up too much space”.
There is another dog in the apartment – Prague Ratter in his pocket, Renard, who starred with Dan Dujardin (“The Fool”) in the French comedy The Presidents.
But Messi has revealed that he has been offered an “American script” since Messi and Martin appeared at the Oscars, but won’t say anything more.
