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Monument to French cinema, actor Michel Piccoli died on May 12 at the age of 94. Made famous for his roles in Le Mépris, Les Choses de la vie or more recently Habemus papam , he died from a stroke. In 2010, he was the guest of Frédéric Taddéi's show on Europe 1. He then mentioned the friendship he had forged with the famous British director Alfred Hitchcock.
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"He was a man of great humor, much more modest than [the portrait] that we made of him," declared Michel Piccoli. The two men had notably collaborated during the shooting of the film L'Étau , released in 1969. "We got along very well," recalled the actor.
The actors were trying to lure Hitchcock to a nightclub
Michel Piccoli recounted Alfred Hitchcock's invitation to come and have dinner at his house, with all the actors: "We said to ourselves 'it's going to be solemn again, like the shooting, but we have to introduce ourselves'." Then, how the actors had tried to lure Alfred Hitchcock to the nightclub, unfortunately without success.
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"The next day, one of the assistants came to find me and said 'Mr Hitchcock is ready to shoot'," continued Michel Piccoli. "I replied to continue the farce of our last night: 'You tell Mr Hitchcock that I am not ready'." Making Hitchcock wait a few minutes, to overcome the fatigue caused by this nocturnal trip, the actor would then have gone to the director to ask him "What's the deep meaning of that scene?" ["What is the deeper meaning of this scene that I am going to play?"], To which he would have retorted "Money" ["Money"]. A way to make the actor understand that his cachet depended on his performance in front of the camera.