Philippe Noiret

Philippe Noiret 1 October 1930 23 November 2006 was a French film actor Noiret was born in Lille France the son of Lucy Heirman and Pierre Noiret a clothing company representative He was an indifferent student and attended several prestigious Paris schools including the Lycée Janson de Sailly He failed several times to pass his baccalauréat exams so he decided to study theater He trained at the Centre Dramatique de lOuest and toured with the Théâtre National Populaire for seven years where he met Monique Chaumette whom he married in 1962 During that time he developed a career as a nightclub comedian in a duo act with JeanPierre Darras in which he played Louis XIV in an extravagant wig opposite Darras as the dramatist Jean Racine In these roles they satirized the politics of Charles de Gaulle Michel Debré and André Malraux Noirets screen debut 1949 was an uncredited role in Gigi In 1955 he appeared in La Pointe Courte directed by Agnès Varda She said later I discovered in him a breadth of talent rare in a young actor Sporting a puddingbasin haircut Noiret played a lovelorn youth in the southern fishing port of Sète He later admitted I was scared stiff and fumbled my way through the partI am totally absent in the film He was not cast again until 1960 in Zazie dans le Métro After playing second leads in Georges Franjus Thérèse Desqueyroux in 1962 and in Le Capitaine Fracasse from Théophile Gautiers romantic adventure he became a regular on the French screen without being cast in major roles until A Matter of Resistance directed by JeanPaul Rappeneau in 1966 He became a star in France with Yves Roberts Alexandre le Bienheureux When I began to have success in the movies Noiret told film critic Joe Leydon at the Cannes Film Festival in 1989 it was a big surprise for me For actors of my generationall the men of 50 or 60 now in French moviesall of us were thinking of being stage actors Even people like JeanPaul Belmondo all of us we never thought wed become movie stars So at the beginning I was just doing it for the money and because they asked me to do it But after two or three years of working on movies I started to enjoy it and to be very interested in it And Im still very interested in it because Ive never really understood how it works I mean what is acting for the movies Ive never really understood Noiret was cast primarily as the Everyman character although he did not hesitate to accept controversial roles such as in La Grande Bouffe a film about suicide by overeating which caused a scandal at Cannes in 1973 and in 1991 André Téchiné cast Noiret in Jembrasse pas I Dont Kiss as a melancholy old homosexual obsessed with young male flesh And in 1987 in The Gold Rimmed Glasses based on Giorgio Bassanis novel about the cramped social life of postwar Ferrara in Italy he played an elderly and respectable doctor who is gradually suspected of being a covert homosexual with a passion for a beautiful young man Rupert Everett Noiret won his first César Award for his role in Vieux Fusil in 1976 His second César came in 1990 for his role in Life and Nothing But Source Article Philippe Noiret from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA