Philippe Noiret

Acting

Born Oct 01, 1930

From Lille, Nord, France

Died Nov 23, 2006

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 l'Ouest 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 Jean-Pierre 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. Noiret's 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 pudding-basin 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 part—I am totally absent in the film." He was not cast again until 1960 in Zazie dans le Métro. After playing second leads in Georges Franju's Thérèse Desqueyroux in 1962, and in Le Capitaine Fracasse, from Théophile Gautier's romantic adventure, he became a regular on the French screen, without being cast in major roles until A Matter of Resistance directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau in 1966. He became a star in France with Yves Robert's 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 generation—all the men of 50 or 60 now in French movies—all of us were thinking of being stage actors. Even people like Jean-Paul Belmondo, all of us, we never thought we'd 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 I'm still very interested in it, because I've never really understood how it works. I mean, what is acting for the movies? I've 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 J'embrasse pas (I Don't Kiss), as a melancholy old homosexual obsessed with young male flesh. And in 1987, in The Gold Rimmed Glasses based on Giorgio Bassani's novel about the cramped social life of post-war 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 CC-BY-SA.

Philippe Noiret

Known For

Cinema Paradiso

Woman Times Seven

The Postman

The Old Gun

Topaz

The Night of the Generals

My Friends

The Sparrow's Fluttering

'Round Midnight

Rendezvous

Filmography — Acting

Cinema Paradiso

Woman Times Seven

The Postman

The Old Gun

Topaz

The Night of the Generals

My Friends

The Sparrow's Fluttering

'Round Midnight

Rendezvous

Clerambard

The Return of the Musketeers

Justine

On Guard

The Desert of the Tartars

La Grande Bouffe

Fort Saganne

Murphy's War

Playing with Fire

Coup de Torchon

Zazie dans le Métro

The Beaches of Agnès

Dead Tired

The Assassination Bureau

My New Partner

D'Artagnan's Daughter

Dear Inspector

The Judge and the Assassin

Lady L

Let Joy Reign Supreme

The Palermo Connection

Chouans !

My Friends Act II

I Don't Kiss

The Family

Olivia

Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?

La Pointe Courte

The Serpent

Very Happy Alexander

The Chops

The Assassination

Edy

Marianna Ucrìa

Don't Touch the White Woman!

Tender Scoundrel

Three Brothers

Give Her the Moon

My New Partner II

Twist Again in Moscow

Tango

A Day in the Life of French Cinema

The Tender Age

Soleil

Birgit Haas Must Be Killed

Marcello, una vita dolce

The Man Who Planted Trees

A Friend of Vincent

Le Roi de Paris

Let's Hope It's a Girl

Mr. Freedom

A Woman at Her Window

Gigi

Against Oblivion

Les Milles

Life and Nothing But

The Grand Dukes