Death of comedian Michel Bouquet at the age of 96

The famous actor is dead. In 2005, he received the César for best actor for his portrayal of François Mitterrand in Le Promeneur du Champ-de-Mars. Actor Michel Bouquet, known for his roles in La Femme infidèle, Borsalino and Le Promeneur du Champ-de-Mars Mars, died this Wednesday at the end of the morning at the age of 96, after a life devoted to the art of acting. The tireless actor, who had taken his first steps in the theater at the age of 19 in 1944, had waited until his ninety-fourth year to announce, after a 75-year career, that he would no longer return to the stage. This apprentice pastry chef who had become a comedian of genius, follower of an often disturbing interiorized game, loved with the same passion the cinema and the theater: “I did not have a preference because the two things are very different but they have the same value”, confided- he told AFP in 2019 when he bowed out. “It’s forgetting oneself that is the most important”, added this giant who preferred to disappear behind the roles: “I did what I I could, as I could, and I didn’t ask myself too many questions. I made my merry way but without any intellectual pretensions. “His theatrical career was remarkably consistent. Started in 1944 with Le Tartuffe, it ended in 2017 with the same piece. In the meantime, he will have played in nearly 80 plays, with a predilection for Molière (The Imaginary Invalid) and Eugène Ionesco (The King is dying), but also Anouilh, Pinter, Beckett and Camus. His career follows the story of the century. Born in 1925, he was destined for pastry when a “mysterious force” changed his destiny and pushed him “to strike on a Sunday morning [de 1943] at the doorstep of a great theater teacher”, Maurice Escande, who took him under his wing and taught him everything, he told Le Monde in 2016. He entered the Conservatory where he met Gérard Philippe and became one of the most fashionable actors.In 1947, Bouquet participated in the Festival d’Avignon from its first edition but struggled to get along with the masters of the moment – Jean Vilar, Claude Régy and Roger Planchon. , he made his way into quality popular cinema and appeared in more than 65 films at the cinema and around fifty television films under the direction of François Truffaut (The Bride Was in Black), Jacques Deray (Borsalino), José Giovanni ( Two Men in the City), Henri Verneuil (Le Serpent), Yves Boisset (Un condé), André Cayatte (La Raison d’Etat) and Alain Corneau (France Société Anonyme) He is one of Claude Chabrol’s favorite actors (La Unfaithful wife, Chicken in vinegar), in which he embodies the prototype of bo antipathetic urgeois: “During the six films I shot for him, I always tried to guess his point of view: what secrets could hide behind his desire to make such and such a film? Because he could well declare that he had written La Femme infidèle especially for me, I personally felt nothing in common with this bourgeois murderer character…”, he told Télérama in 2010. Often employed in the roles of notary, banker or policeman, he excelled in troubled characters.Familiar face of thrillers or political films of the 1970s, Michel Bouquet also lent his voice to several documentaries, including the famous Nuit et Brouillard by Alain Resnais in 1956. Good comic timing, Bouquet has also appeared in several comedies: a clumsy gangster in Papa les p’tits Bateaux (1971) by Nelly Kaplan, he also lends itself to the extravagances of Michel Audiard in Bonsissers… à monday (1974). In The Toy (1976) by Francis Veber, he played Pierre Rambal-Cochet, a ruthless billionaire who made Pierre Richard his son’s plaything. He did not hesitate to slip off the beaten track and entrust his destiny to young directors. .P ierre Zucca hired him for Vincent put the donkey in a meadow (and came to the other) (1975), where Fabrice Lucchini also started. Bouquet befriends the director Edouard Luntz, author of several amazing films including Les Cœurs Verts which have become untraceable. Bouquet nevertheless holds thanks to Luntz two of his best roles in Le Dernier Saut (1970) and L’Humeur vagabonde (1972). Rarer, he enjoyed himself with Les Côtelettes by Bertrand Blier (at the theater in 1997, then in the cinema in 2003), then moved in Le Promeneur du Champ de Mars (2005) by Robert Guédiguian, which won him the César for best actor in 2006. At 80, he offers a lesson in comedy: without make-up or artifice of language, Michel Bouquet manages to bring former President François Mitterrand back to life. Six years later, director Gilles Bourdos offers him the role of Renoir ‘who touched me the most in my life’, that of the august painter. A role that earned him a new César nomination, but did not mark the end of his film career. He notably accepts in 2019 Bernard Stora’s proposal to appear in a drama as he likes them, against a backdrop of power struggle, Villa Caprice, whose title now sounds like a final snub to his end which he knew was near. .