The award-winning French actor Michel Bouquet, who appeared in more than 100 films during his 70-year career, died in a Paris hospital on Wednesday aged 96.
A legend of stage and screen, Bouquet was known for working with new wave directors such as François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol.
He will be remembered for playing the lead role in Eugene Ionesco's absurdist drama Exit the King no fewer than 800 times, along with iconic performances in Molière's The Miser.
He won two César Awards – the French equivalent of the Oscars – for his roles in How I Killed My Father in 2001 alongside Juliette Binoche, and 2005's The Last Mitterrand, in which he portrayed the former French president during his final days.
Bouquet also won two Molieres, France's top theatre award.
"I am profoundly sad," film star Alain Delon told AFP. "Michel Bouquet was a very great actor."
Recalling the films they had made together, he added: "The only thing left to me are great and beautiful memories."
“One hell of a giant has just left us," President Emmanuel Macron's office said in a statement.
"For seven decades, Michel Bouquet brought theatre and cinema to the highest degree of incandescence and truth, showing man in all his contradictions, with an intensity that scorched the boards and stole the scene," he posted on Twitter.
Sept décennies durant, Michel Bouquet a porté le théâtre et le cinéma au plus haut degré d’incandescence et de vérité, montrant l’homme dans toutes ses contradictions, avec une intensité qui brûlait les planches et crevait l’écran. Un monstre sacré nous a quittés. pic.twitter.com/l3V5mz6EXd
— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) April 13, 2022
Shakespeare and Beckett
Born in Paris in 1925, Bouquet inherited his love of performing from his mother, who regularly took him to the theatre.
"Each time the curtain rose, there was more horror than the war ... the unreal world exceeded the real world by far," he told AFP in 2019.
"It was the best education of my life."
After taking acting lessons, Bouquet began a long-term working relationship with playwright Jean Anouilh and director André Barsacq, performing in plays such as Romeo and Jeanette.
In his younger years, Bouquet was cast in several classics of 1960s new wave cinema, including Chabrol's The Unfaithful Wife and Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid.
He played many Shakespearean roles and while he was dedicated to the classics, Bouquet also helped to bring contemporary foreign writers including Britain's Harold Pinter and Ireland's Samuel Beckett to French audiences.
Highest French honours
As well as his Oscar-winning big-screen roles, Bouquet received a European Film Award for his interpretation of the old man Thomas in the 1991 film Toto the Hero.
He also played Javert in Robert Hossein's 1982 adaptation of the musical Les Misérables, based on the Victor Hugo novel.
In 2018 he was given the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, France's highest honour, for his contributions to the arts.
Announcing his retirement in 2019, Bouquet said: "In the theatre, the personality of the author is so majestic, whether it be Pinter or Molière, that all one does is try to convey the word as obediently as possible."
