
Acting
Michel Bouquet
Born 1925-11-06 · Paris, France
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.
Acting credits
6.9A man begins to believe his wife is cheating on him.
The Unfaithful Wife
1969
8.3Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Night and Fog
1956
6.6Darien, a left-wing police informant, is forced to lure his old friend Sadiel to Paris, allegedly to film a television special about the Third World. Sadiel, the exiled leader of a North African state, is being hunted by the ruthless Colonel Kassar, who will stop at nothing to capture his political rival. Once Sadiel arrives in Paris, Darien realizes he has been manipulated. He tries to turn back the clock, not realizing what or who he’s truly dealing with.
The Assassination
1972
6.9When Francois, a journalist, tours a big store for an article, he is chosen by the son of the newspaper's owner, Rambal-Cochet, as his new toy. Needing money and unwilling to quit his job, Francois agrees to this ridiculous assignment. Gradually befriending the spoiled boy, he induces him to play at making a newspaper, unveiling publicly the tyrannical way of life of the father. The powerful emotional climax we experience with the child astonishes both men.
The Toy
1976
6.9In 1930s Marseilles two small-time crooks decide to join forces when they meet while brawling over a woman. Starting with fixed horse races and boxing matches, they soon find themselves doing jobs for the local gangster bosses. When they decide to go into the business for themselves, their easy-going approach to crime starts to change.
Borsalino
1970
6.6A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woman he does not know. The woman that arrives does not look like the picture he received, but he marries her anyway.
Mississippi Mermaid
1969
7.1Julie Kohler is prevented from suicide by her mother. She leaves home with the intent to track down, charm and kill five men who do not know her. What is her goal? What is her purpose?
The Bride Wore Black
1968
7.8A tale of the tender relationship between a twelve-year-old boy and the fourteen-year-old upperclassman who is the object of his desire, all set within the rigid atmosphere of a Jesuit-run school.
This Special Friendship
1964
4.8Three thieves, Henri-Pierre, Bob and Dimitri decide to take on Frankie Strong, a wealthy businessman.
Kisses Till Monday
1974
7.1A former bank robber is released after 10 years in prison. He gets help from a social-worker, but gets harassed by an old cop from his past.
Two Men in Town
1973
6.1Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case. After polygraph tests and cross-examinations, Vlassov names several Western European agents who are also spying for the Soviets. Davies wants to take the listed agents into custody; meanwhile, those on the list start dying under mysterious circumstances.
The Serpent
1973
6.4Marie has had a tough childhood ever since her mother Elisa committed suicide. She has spent most of her life in an orphanage and now makes a living as a small time criminal in Paris. Now she wants to unravel her past and find her father whom she blames for her mother's death.
Élisa
1995
7.0In 19th century France, Jean Valjean, a man imprisoned for stealing bread, must flee a relentless policeman named Javert. The pursuit consumes both men's lives, and soon Valjean finds himself in the midst of the student revolutions in France.
Les Misérables
1982
6.3In the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir, son of the Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste, returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. At his side is Andrée, a young woman who rejuvenates, enchants, and inspires both father and son.
Renoir
2012
7.1Following the death of his wife, a renowned musician ostracises himself from the outer world and dedicates his life to music. However, his life changes when a young man approaches him to learn music.
All the Mornings of the World
1991
10.0At fifty, René Maugras has lost everything. This wealthy press boss fell into a coma and was rushed to hospital. He has since emerged from his worrying state of health but remains unable to move and communicate. He must also begin rehabilitation, which turns out to be particularly humiliating. Fortunately for him there is Blanche, his nurse, who surrounds him with affection. Blanche takes her case to heart.
Les Anneaux de Bicêtre
1977
4.7Thérèse, a young flower girl, tries hard to remain virtuous but the whole world seems to conspire against her, whether her petty Paris family, or her relatives in the province bristling with false respectability, or her lustful employer, or the boy she loves who seduces her and abandons her. But at the end of the day there is Yvon, her childhood friend. Will he be the one that will love her truly?
Two Pennies Worth of Violets
1951
6.4Tsar Alexandre II meets a young student, Katia. He understands that he loves her and try to send her away but they end up seeing each other again and becomes his mistress. With the help of Katia, Alexandre prepares a liberal constitution, but these reforms make him hostile to the more privileged subjects without satirising the revolutionaries against the regime.
Katia
1959
7.180-year-old Thomas recounts his childhood and middle age through a series of flashbacks and dream sequences. Thomas believes he’s been taken away from a better life at birth; following a hospital fire, he vividly recalls being swapped with another new-born, and subsequently grows up in a poorer neighbouring household.
Toto the Hero
1991
4.0Rachel is a lawyer. She is the adopted daughter of a large family of magistrates dominated by Maxime (Michel Bouquet), a ruthless and strange prosecutor. She has not left the world of carelessness, between dreams and nightmares. She often indulges in strange daydreams, but the reality of this case is going to clash with her life. Her first client has just committed suicide in prison. In front of this woman's coffin. Everything comes back to her, the visiting room, the scene of the crime, the story of an abused life. As children, they lived in the same village. Like in a fairy tale, the gate of a castle separated them. The truth about their relationship is revealed. Rachel must face her obsessions.
Secret Ceremony
2022
6.8Port of Marseille, France, recently liberated from the German yoke. Caught as stowaways aboard a ship, Manon, a young woman who was accused of collaborating with the Nazis, and Robert, a freedom fighter who saved her from reprisals, tell the captain about the many challenges they have had to face in order to survive.
Manon
1949
8.0In Troyes, Thomas, the son of a bourgeois family, is in the final stages of his adolescence. He's almost an adult when he discovers that his mother has a lover. At the same time, he realizes that his father is turning a blind eye, and that the estranged couple are only together for show. Thomas rebels, but has to hide his dismay and satisfy his great need for tenderness at the same time.
Thomas
1975
4.8Young Marco Polo travels to China to help Kublai Khan fight against rebels, headed by his own son, with a new invention: gunpowder.
Marco the Magnificent
1965
5.7Paris 1960. DeGaulle determines to end a bitter war in Algeria by granting its independence. Millions oppose him, including a group of DeGaulle's disenchanted Arm Officers. In a desperate attempt to save the colony for France, they plan a daring jailbreak of their imprisoned leader. A network of snitches inform a tenacious detective leading to an explosive three-way cat-and-mouse game among the rebels, the Gaullist politicos and the police.
The Conspiracy
1973