In pictures: Actor Michel Bouquet has left us

Michel Bouquet, monument of the French theater known for having played no less than 800 times

of Ionesco and actor on the big screen at Chabrol and Truffaut, died Wednesday at the age of 96.

Her rather round silhouette, her discreet style and her deep voice, contradicted by a certain mischievousness in her gaze, offered her a wide range of roles.

A giant of the stage, legendary in

and

, who a few years earlier hoped “never to stop playing”.

On the big screen, he was an astonishing Mitterrand in the evening of his life in

by Robert Guédiguian (2004).

A look back at the career of this sacred monster of dramatic art, in pictures.

Directed by:

• Born on November 6, 1925 in Paris, the son of an officer he knew little about because he had become a prisoner of war, Michel Bouquet was sent with his brothers to boarding school, an experience that "terrorized" him.

  Michel Bouquet owes his love of performing to his mother, who regularly takes him to the Opéra Comique. 

• Alternately apprentice pastry chef, dental mechanic, handler during his youth, he went one day to Maurice Escande, member of the Comédie-Française, who offered him to take his lessons.

  Integrating the Conservatory at the same time as Gérard Philipe, he went on stage in 1944, quickly becoming a companion of Jean Anouilh then of Jean Vilar at the TNP (Théâtre national populaire) and at the Festival d'Avignon.

• He left his mark on post-war theater by making the work of Harold Pinter known in France and by putting himself at the service of great classical (Molière, Diderot or Strindberg) and contemporary (Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Albert Camus or Thomas Bernard).

• From 1947, he was also found in the credits of many films, but he had to wait until the 1960s to achieve notoriety.

  Here in

  Pattes Blanches

  (1949) by Jean Gremillon.

• “Each time the curtain rose, there was no longer the horror of the war, there were no longer Germans around (...), the unreal world far exceeded the real world.

  It was the best lesson of my life, ”he confided in 2019.

• Another sacred monster, Alain Delon, said today: “I am deeply sad.

  Michel Bouquet was a very great actor.

  We shot several films including

  Two Men

  in the City and

  Borsalino

  .

  The only thing I have left are great, beautiful memories.

  »

• Michel Bouquet is a masterful Javert in

  Les Misérables

  by Robert Hossein (1982).

  His neutral and poised voice, his taste for ambiguity will also work wonders in Claude Chabrol's films.

• Prolific, often enigmatic and disturbing, the actor received numerous awards during his career.

• In the theater, he twice won the Molière for best actor for

  Cotelettes

  by Bertrand Blier in 1998, and in 2005 for

  The King is Dying

  by Ionesco.

• He received the César for best actor for the first time, in 2002, for Anne Fontaine's film

  How I Killed My Father.

• In 2006, he was an astonishing Mitterrand on the evening of his life in

  Le Promeneur du Champ-de-Mars

  by Robert Guédiguian (2004), with a mimicry that disturbed even those close to the former president.

  An interpretation that earned him a second César for best actor. 

• Playing the painter Auguste Renoir in a film by Gilles Bourdos (2013), he says it is his most touching role.

• The young actress Christa Theret gives him the counterpart in

  Renoir,

  presented at the Cannes Film Festival, in 2012, in the Un Certain Regard selection.

• For him the actor was only "at the service" of the author.

  “The text, there is only the text.

  Everything comes from the author.

  The actor is only there to take the spectator's hand and make him squeeze the author's heart,” he said.

• He triumphed on stage with

  The King is Dying

  , which he played from 1994 and then almost continuously from 2004 to 2014, with his wife Juliette Carré, the formidable Queen Marguerite. 

• In 2017, he received the insignia of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor from the hands of President François Hollande.

• « Son intensité, sa passion pour les textes et les nuances infinies de son jeu ont fait de Michel Bouquet un acteur adoré des spectateurs, comme des artistes qui ont eu le bonheur de travailler avec lui », a estimé aujourd'hui la ministre de la Culture Roselyne Bachelot sur Twitter.

• Jouer était une nécessité intime plus qu'un plaisir. « C'est une angoisse affreuse », disait-il. « Mais c'est intéressant. Pour vivre quelque chose que l'on ne vivrait pas autrement. On ne risque rien, rien, sauf de se casser la figure. »

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