The actor, who played the boss of the café Le Mistral in the cult TV series in France, which stopped at the end of 2022, was found at his home in the afternoon, added this source, confirming information from the regional daily Midi Libre.
The Montpellier prosecutor's office, which was not immediately reachable, has opened an investigation entrusted to the gendarmerie to determine the causes of death, the trail of suicide is not excluded, according to the source close to the investigation.
"Plus belle la vie" is the longest series ever produced in France, originally broadcast on France 3 and now rebroadcast on YouTube. The series, shot in the fictional Marseille district of the Mistral, was stopped by France Télévisions at the end of 2022. It was able to attract up to six million spectators per night.
Michel Cordes, who was born on October 20, 1945 in the Hérault, embodied, for 18 years in Plus Belle la vie, Roland, the owner of the bar Le Mistral where many stories of this series were tied.
Before his fictional death in the series, on the Place du Mistral, the actors of Plus Belle la vie had sent him public messages, praising "a very beautiful actor but above all a simple and sincere man" as well as his "benevolence".
Michel Cordes had also played secondary roles in films such as "Le hussard est sur le toit" by Jean-Paul Rappenau, alongside Juliette Binoche and Olivier Martinez (1995), or in Une affaire de goût (2000) alongside Bernard Giraudeau.
He also had a long career in the theater, as an actor but also as a director. A fervent defender of Occitan, he had suffered from the contempt of some for his accent.
"The France is such that as soon as you hear a southern accent, fools laugh. I've traveled a lot and I can tell you: as soon as you have the accent, people laugh. A bit like politicians when they want to denigrate you or belittle you to dominate you," he told the Gazette de Montpellier in 2017.
But besides the stage, the man had also learned the trade of cabinetmaker and he was also a sculptor.
© 2023 AFP