Director Robert Hossein, also a theater and film actor, screenwriter and dialogue writer, died Thursday at the age of 93.

At the microphone of Europe 1, actor Philippe Torreton underlined his desire to bring together the public, even laymen, around the theater and to launch new actors.

INTERVIEW

Robert Hossein died Thursday at the age of 93 after "a respiratory problem" according to his wife Candice Patou.

Evoking his relationship with the director and his vision of the 6th art, actor Philippe Torreton paid tribute to him at the microphone of Europe 1: "I take my hat off to him, he was a great man of the theater."

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Big theater

"He wanted to go to big shows in big places", first underlines Philippe Torreton, citing as an example the pieces on the theme of the French Revolution, or great figures like Jesus or Napoleon.

According to him, this wish responded to the need to make theater accessible to an audience that was not necessarily connoisseur.

This vision of a somewhat grandiloquent theater, requiring the use of significant human and technical resources, would have earned him some mockery, by Philippe Torreton's own admission.

Unjustified according to the latter: "No matter what first step we take, the important thing is to take one. He wanted to bring together as much as possible."

"He trusted lots of young actors" 

Philippe Torreton also remembers Robert Hossein as the one who launched many actors, from Isabelle Adjani to Jacques Weber.

"He trusted lots of young actors."

The director, who directed the Marigny theater, could maintain real relationships of trust with his actors.

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Philippe Torreton relates in particular that he had obtained from Robert Hossein a "carte blanche" to stage and interpret Molière's Don Juan.

"It was a great adventure and I really owe it to him. It was not empty words: when he said 'I want to see you in my theater', it was true", launches the actor, once again greeting "a man of great heart".