With the death of Michel Bouquet, theater and cinema lose a giant

A sacred monster and a tireless actor.

Michel Bouquet, who has just passed away at the age of 96, had perhaps dreamed of dying one day on stage, like his favorite character of the

by Eugène Ionesco, which he will have played at the theater no less than 800 times in twenty years.

Carole Bouquet's father will remain as an immense actor, appreciated as much by theatergoers, for whom he helped to make Pinter, Becket or Ionesco known, as for his outstanding roles in the cinema, endorsing often secret characters with great subtlety. and equivocal, often with a certain playfulness in their eyes.

Although he has always preferred theater to cinema, twice winning the Molière for best actor, including in 2005 for

, which he played from 1994 then almost continuously from 2004 to 2014, Michel Bouquet has acted in more of a hundred films.

He even won two Césars for

by Anne Fontaine (2002) and

by Robert Guédiguian (2006) in which he embodied an astonishing François Mitterrand at the end of his life, with a mimicry that will disturb even those close to the former president.

"There is a novel character in Mitterrand", explained the actor.

"If my film is a fiction on Mitterrand, it is also a document on the art of Michel Bouquet", affirmed for his part Robert Guédiguian, adding: "If it had not been Michel Bouquet, I do not believe that I would have made the movie.

Michel Bouquet has a natural theatricality (…) For this role, he needed a majesty (…)”.

In the cinema, we will also remember him for his roles with François Truffaut (

in 1967 and

in 1968) and especially with Claude Chabrol, who employed him in the roles of provincial notables, secrets and misguided.

He forged a lasting bond with this director and acted in several of his films (

).

A final film scheduled for June

Born in 1925, admitted to the Conservatoire in 1944 at the same time as Gérard Philippe, his career began in 1947 and did not stop until 2019, at least in the theater, because the man was physically challenged.

But Michel Bouquet continued to shoot a few more films:

by Bernard Stora in 2021 or

by Tatiana Becquet-Genel, which will not be released in theaters until June 2022. In reality, the one who kept repeating " the text, there is only the text, everything comes from the author, the actor is only there to take the hand of the spectator and make him squeeze the heart of the author” had in fact planned to “ never stop playing”.

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Comedian Michel Bouquet died at the age of 96

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Michel Bouquet, “tired”, confides that he will no longer go back on stage

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