Paris (AFP)

Unforgettable interpreter of the "Commissioner Moulin" for more than 25 years on TF1, Yves Rénier died at the age of 78, after having marked the small screen as a director as well, with successful TV films inspired by various facts.

He died on the night of Friday to Saturday from a heart attack at his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), his wife told AFP.

He "was often part of the great fiction successes of TF1", tweeted the channel, recalling that he was still on the screen this Thursday in "Léo Mattéi, Brigade des mineurs".

The actor had passed to the realization in recent years with in particular the telefilm devoted to Jacqueline Sauvage ("It was him or it was me"), with Muriel Robin, or more recently "The Hunt" with Philippe Torreton.

Born September 29, 1942 in Bern (Switzerland), son of French actor Max Régneier and an English mother, Yves Rénier began his film career in 1961 in "Le Comte de Monte-Cristo" by Claude Autant-Lara .

After this first experience, he painfully connects several films without real success.

It was in 1965 that he met public success in the mini-series "Belphégor" by Claude Barma, where he shared the bill with singer Juliette Gréco.

He will also play in the series "The Globe-trotters" (1966), where he is alongside actor Edward Meeks, an adventurer who travels around the world with his savings.

Fascinated by various facts, it is his character of "Mill" which gives him notoriety.

In this series created in 1976 by Paul Andréota and Claude Boissol, he plays a police officer in pursuit of murderers, racketeers and criminals with a relaxed look.

The television series was interrupted in 1982 before being resumed in 1989 by Yves Rénier and Georges Moréas, former retired commissioner.

- "Not politically correct" -

Great public and critical success (up to 10 million viewers), "Commissioner Moulin" was the first French police series "new generation" in comparison to the series of the time such as "the investigations of Commissioner Maigret".

Yves Rénier himself writes a dozen scenarios and the series welcomes many celebrities such as Johnny Hallyday.

"Moulin is not perfect, he sometimes has borderline gestures for a commissioner but he is a human being. He is not politically correct," he confided to the daily Le Parisien in 2004.

After a record longevity, the series ended in 2008 against a backdrop of controversy over the violence of the main character.

"I've always had this reputation as an ultra-violent guy. It's so + faux-derche + when you see American films," he also said to the Parisian that year.

In parallel, he interpreted several small roles in the cinema, before opting for the realization.

He thus realizes "Flic quite simply" on the Guy Georges affair with Mathilde Seigner, and "Chief medical officer for health".

But it is above all his two-part TV movie "Jacqueline Sauvage, it was him or me" which achieves the best audience of the year 2018 for a French fiction, close to 9 million viewers on TF1.

The TV movie, inspired by the book by Jacqueline Sauvage who killed her husband before obtaining a presidential pardon, had even broken an audience record since 2015 for a French fiction.

He then directed "La Traque", a fiction which revisits the hunt for serial killer Michel Fourniret and his wife, Monique Olivier.

"The public is more numerous when these are true stories, he told AFP in 2019, specifying that the television channels were just as demanding.

Yves Rénier also did the French dubbing of Burt Reynolds, Chuck Norris ("Walker Texas Ranger"), Paul Hogan and Tommy Lee Jones.

He was the father of four children, two of them with his last wife, Karin.

In the early 1980s, he was in a relationship with American actress Goldie Hawn.

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