Acting
Michel Bouquet
Michel Bouquet (6 November 1925 – 13 April 2022) was a French stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films from 1947 to 2020. He won the Best Actor European Film Award for Toto the Hero in 1991 and two Best Actor Césars for How I Killed My Father (2001) and The Last Mitterrand (2005). He also received the Molière Award for Best Actor for Les côtelettes in 1998, then again for Exit the King in 2005. In 2014, he was awarded the Honorary Molière for the sum of his career. He received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor in 2018.
Michel François Pierre Bouquet was born on 6 November 1925 in Paris. When he was seven years old, he was sent to a boarding school where he stayed until the age of 14. He aspired to become a doctor but had to quit school at the age of 15 after his father had been taken prisoner during World War II. Bouquet worked as a baker's apprentice, then a bank clerk, to provide for the family. After a short stay in Lyon, he returned with his mother to Paris. Marie Bouquet was passionate about theater, and that helped the young Bouquet to find his vocation. He took acting classes under the tutelage of Maurice Escande, a member of the Comédie Française, and made his stage debut in the play La première étape in 1944. Then he studied at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Paris where he met Gérard Philippe.
In the mid-1940s Michel Bouquet began working with the playwright Jean Anouilh and director André Barsacq, who staged plays at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Montmartre. In 1946, Anouilh gave Bouquet a part in Roméo and Jeannette, followed by The Rendez-vous of Senlis and The Invitation to the Castle in 1947. In the 1950s, the actor met another stage director, Jean Vilar, with whom he would frequently collaborate. Bouquet played many roles from the classical repertoire at the Festival d'Avignon, created by Vilar in 1947 (Henry IV in 1950, The Tragedy of King Richard II in 1953, and The Miser in 1962). Bouquet regularly worked with Anouilh until the early 1970s, then helped popularize in France the works of the British author Harold Pinter: The Collection in 1965, The Birthday Party in 1967 and No Man's Land in 1979.
At the same time, at the end of the 1970s, Michel Bouquet was appointed professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and taught there until 1990. In the 1980s-1990s, he returned to the Théâtre de l'Atelier where he once began his career. In 1994, he played in Exit the King by Eugène Ionesco, the role he would perform many times until 2014. In 1998 he received the Molière Award for Best Actor for Bertrand Blier's Les côtelettes, then again for Exit the King in 2005. In 2014, he was awarded the Honorary Molière for the sum of his career. A year later, the actor received accolades for his performance in Taking Sides by the British playwright Ronald Harwood. Bouquet announced his retirement from stage in 2019. ...
Source: Article "Michel Bouquet" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Filmography
Browse movies and TV shows featuring Michel Bouquet
Vivement dimanche
Spécial cinéma
Marcello Mastroianni, Isabelle Adjani, Alain Delon, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen... the biggest stars in cinema...
Discorama
Samedi soir
Maigret
The pragmatic, reserved and refined Maigret investigates murders in his singular unhurried manner and inevitabl...
28 minutes
Night and Fog
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
La Case du siècle
A French current affairs show.
This Special Friendship
A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old upperclassman who is...
The Unfaithful Wife
A man begins to believe his wife is cheating on him.
The Bride Wore Black
Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves home, with the intent track down, charm and ki...
Two Men in Town
A former bank robber is released after 10 years in prison. He gets help from a social-worker, but gets harassed...
All the Mornings of the World
Following the death of his wife, a renowned musician ostracises himself from the outer world and dedicates his...
Mississippi Mermaid
A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woma...
Toto the Hero
80-year-old Thomas recounts his childhood and middle age through a series of flashbacks and dream sequences. Th...
The Serpent
Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case...
Borsalino
In 1930s Marseilles two small-time crooks decide to join forces when they meet while brawling over a woman. Sta...
Les Misérables
In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman nam...
À la recherche de... Pierre Richard
Follow in the footsteps of burlesque actor Pierre Richard, a key figure in French cinema in the 1970s and 1980s.
Mozart
A miniseries about the life of Mozart.
Renoir
In the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir, son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste, retu...
The Toy
When Francois, a journalist, tours a big store for an article, he is chosen by the son of the newspaper's owner...
Katia
Tsar Alexandre II meets a young student, Katia. He understands that he loves her and try to send her away but t...
Monsieur Vincent
The life of Vincent de Paul, the 17th-century author and priest who founded two religious orders.
The Cop
A crackdown on drugs leads a burned out cop to take the law into his own hands and seek revenge against villain...
Le malade imaginaire
The Assassination
Darien, a left-wing police informant, is forced to lure his old friend Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to film a tel...
Le Regard dans le miroir
Dora Stern, an American photographer living in Paris, wakes up from the same nightmare over and over again. In...
Marco the Magnificent
Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new i...
Manon
Port of Marseille, France, recently liberated from the German yoke. Caught as stowaways aboard a ship, Manon, a...
The Suspects
In the south of France, the body of a 22-year-old American tourist, Candice Strasberg, is discovered in the mid...
Malpertuis
A young sailor finds himself trapped in the labyrinthine mansion of his occultist uncle, along with a number of...
The Origin of Violence
A French teacher makes a startling discovery while on a trip to Buchenwald.
The Conspiracy
Paris 1960. DeGaulle determines to end a bitter war in Algeria by granting its independence. Millions oppose hi...
Lamiel
Lamiel is a poor orphan girl who climbs to the social elite in this 19th-century costume drama. Sansfin, provin...