"I prefer the theater, I could have spent my life doing theater," he said in May 2017, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival where he was to present "Happy End" by Michael Haneke, recognizing that " the cinema was better paid".

The theater, "it's our real job; we make movies a bit out of vanity because it's much more recognized," he added in an interview with AFP in 2018.

In recent years, the actor had returned to the stage under the friendly pressure of his relatives, for recitals of poems.

In March 2017 at the Salle Pleyel, then at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint Martin the following year, he appeared for readings of poems by Prévert, Vian and Desnos, accompanied on the accordion by Daniel Mille and his quartet at strings playing Piazzolla.

Trintignant had started his poetic recitals at the end of the 90s with his daughter Marie.

Together, they read in particular the "Poèmes à Lou", Apollinaire's love letters to his beloved, a show he will give in 2005 at the Avignon Festival in homage to Marie, who died two years earlier from blows. by his companion Bertrand Cantat.

The love of the theater has never left him: he admits in an interview with the Obs that he "never liked" Cannes and that he "does not like the cinema too much".

In recent years, he had several times announced his final departure from the scene, before admitting: "I should stop, but I don't want to. The happiest moments of my life are when I work, when I do theatre.

As a young man, Trintignant dreamed of being a car racer, and it was the discovery of poetry and then theater in the arenas of Nîmes ("Jules César" by Shakespeare) or even "L'Avare" by Molière directed by Charles Dullin that orient him towards the stage.

A shy one who has remained so

This southerner "goes up" to Paris where he follows the courses of Charles Dullin then of Tania Balachova in Paris.

Employed as an extra at the National Popular Theater of Jean Vilar, he rubbed shoulders with a certain Gérard Philipe.

"The theater is an extraordinary therapy for a shy person", he will say, admitting to having never completely overcome this shyness.

He made his debut in 1951 in "To each according to his hunger" by Jean Mogin directed by Raymond Hermantier.

The following year, he took part in the adventure of the Comédie de Saint-Etienne, a pioneer of popular theatre, with "Macbeth" directed by Jean Dasté.

Jean-Louis Trintignant in Paris in February 1975 STAFF AFP/Archives

In 1954, he landed his first major role in "Limited Responsibility" by Robert Hossein, directed by Jean-Pierre Grenier.

At the same time, he began studying at Idhec, the film school and made his debut on the big screen with Christian-Jaque's "If all the guys in the world" (1956) and especially "And God ... created the wife" of Vadim who made him famous but whom he later admitted "not to like very much".

The military service during the Algerian war, which he "completely demolished", kept him away from theater and cinema.

He will regain all his energy thanks to "Hamlet" directed by Maurice Jacquemont at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées.

But he will quickly be caught up in the cinema (more than 60 films in twenty years!), abandoning the stage which he will find in the 80s and 90s. He is on the poster for "Love letters", and the play to success of Yasmina Reza "Art" with Pierre Vaneck and Pierre Arditi then Pierre Vaneck and Jean Rochefort (1996 to 1998).

Then comes the time of accomplice readings with his daughter Marie.

From the 2000s, poetry takes precedence over the theater, as if the actor could give free rein to his melancholy there, and there only.

© 2022 AFP