Leboeuf: From marking Ronaldo in WC final to performing 5 shows a week on stage

The queue is forming outside Comedie Saint-Martin, a small theatre in the heart of Paris, and Frank Leboeuf swerves up on to the pavement on his BMW motorbike. ‘Full house!’ he says, whipping off his helmet and acknowledging a couple at the front.

With an hour until curtain call, he makes a dash for his dressing room. A dark, pokey den, full of wigs and costumes. ‘It’s not Real Madrid or Chelsea but it’s fun. I share it with my hitman who comes to kill me!’ he says, explaining the narrative of Hernie Fiscale, a six-month production about mistaken identity.

The billboards display his name on the cast list like anyone else’s. Not the World Cup winner or the Chelsea legend. Just Frank Leboeuf. This is his life now, five shows a week.

‘I played 700 games of football and I’ve played 1,400 times on stage,’ he says, explaining how he went from marking Ronaldo in the 1998 World Cup final to featuring in Hollywood blockbusters.

‘My real stars were actors. When I was young I watched plays with my mother on TV and I wanted to do that. When I played for Chelsea in 1999 I met Ronald Harwood through a neighbour.

He wrote the play called Taking Sides and the year after he called me to say it was becoming a movie and he’d like me to be in it.

‘I went to see our manager, Mr Claudio Ranieri, and said, “Can I go to Berlin for three days to shoot the movie?”. He said, “Yes, for sure” and when I came back I knew what I wanted to do at the end of my career. So when I gave up football I went to LA to study acting.’

Leboeuf enrolled at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, whose alumni include Alec Baldwin, Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson. Acting took off, although he rarely drew attention to his radical career change. In 2014 he played