(Paris) Jean-Louis Trintignant, a key figure in French cinema and theater best known for his role in ‘A Man and a Woman’, died on Friday at the age of 91.
Updated June 17th
Jean-François GUYOT Agence France-Presse
The And God Created Woman And Love actor, who was said to be seriously ill, “died peacefully this morning of old age at his home in Gard (south of France), surrounded by loved ones, his wife and family members in a statement to AFP.
His funeral will be private.
The life of the actor with the enveloping voice was marked by several dramas, including the death of his daughter Marie, actress, killed in 2003 by the beating of her companion, the singer Bertrand Cantat. Drama that caused a stir and never recovered from it.
Photo ERIC FEFERBERG, Agence France-Presse archives
Jean-Louis Trintignant and his ex-wife Nadine Trintignant at the funeral of their daughter Marie in 2003.
“I’m shattered,” he confided after the tragedy that made him move away from the sets for ten years.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday hailed the memory of an “enormous artistic talent” who “accompanied our lives a little through French cinema”. “It’s a page turning,” added the head of state, citing the actor’s “soft voice.”
Jean-Louis Trintignant entered the history of cinema with A man and a woman by Claude Lelouch, where he played a racing driver in love with Anouk Aimée on the beach at Deauville. Jean-Louis Trintignant won the Cannes Film Festival for Z by Costa-Gavras in 1969 and a César for Best Actor for Amour by Michael Haneke, Palme d’Or 2012.
His last appearance on the big screen was in 2019’s The Finest Years of a Life, where he found partner Anouk Aimée and director Claude Lelouch.
Photo archive Agence France-Presse
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival
He also made a quick on-camera appearance during the Cesar 2021 ceremony, where he appeared very reduced.
A voice and a smile
“He was the first actor to say yes to me. Seven films, he offered me his talent seven times,” said Claude Lelouch, touched, on RTL radio and praised “the most beautiful voice we’ve heard in theater and cinema.” “He gave us his scars. He was a remarkable man […] I owe him everything,” he continued.
“After Belmondo there’s another brother going and I’m upset,” Alain Delon, 86, who worked with him in Jacques Deray’s Flic Story (1975), responded to AFP.
Photo courtesy of SPC/Métropole Films
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva in Michael Haneke’s film Amour
“He was someone rare, bewildering in a good way. A great actor. He worked with his tape recorder in his hand and said poetry all his life, and at the end of his life, so the last four years, he shocked everyone by saying wonderful poems in a wonderful way. And he’s made great films, Lelouch of course, but there’s also Le Conformiste, Rouge, great films after all,” responded his ex-wife Nadine Trintignant, mother of his children, on BFMTV.
“He embodied, role after role, all the passions and all the torments of humanity,” French culture minister Rima Abdul Malak tweeted.
His phlegm, his voice and his magnetism make his presence recognizable to millions of viewers around the world.
Born on December 11, 1930 in Piolenc, southern France, the son of an industrialist took comedy lessons from Charles Dullin in Paris before making his stage debut in 1951.
Photo by FRANÇOIS GUILLOT, Agence France-Presse archives
Jean-Louis Trintignant and his daughter Marie in the comedy on a train platform in 2001
It is the film And God… Created Woman (1956) by Roger Vadim that reveals this in a powerful way. He and Brigitte Bardot, his co-star, play a gutted husband. In real life, however, the opposite happens. A love passion is born with “BB”.
He will then chain successful films alongside all the leading cinema directors: Costa-Gavras, Claude Lelouch, Éric Rohmer, Michael Haneke, Claude Chabrol or Patrice Chéreau. In total, he has acted in almost 120 films.
He had left the cinema after receiving the César for his role in Amour.