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Philippe Noiret

Philippe Noiret

Actor · 1930 – 2006 · Lille, Nord, France

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.

Movies24

  • Movie8.4

    Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

    Cinema Paradiso

    1988 · 5K votes

  • Movie5.8

    Tendre Poulet

    Dear Inspector

    1978 · 88 votes

  • Movie7.1

    La Grande Bouffe

    1973 · 560 votes

  • Movie7.9

    Il postino

    The Postman

    1994 · 1.2K votes

  • Movie6.0

    Topaz

    1969 · 433 votes

  • Movie8.1

    Amici miei

    My Friends

    1975 · 764 votes

  • Movie6.8

    The Night of the Generals

    1967 · 189 votes

  • Movie7.5

    Le Vieux Fusil

    The Old Gun

    1975 · 298 votes

  • Movie7.1

    'Round Midnight

    1986 · 108 votes

  • Movie5.7

    La Fille de d'Artagnan

    D'Artagnan's Daughter

    1994 · 136 votes

  • Movie5.5

    Le Jeu avec le feu

    Playing with Fire

    1975 · 37 votes

  • Movie6.2
  • Movie7.7

    Les Plages d'Agnès

    The Beaches of Agnès

    2008 · 147 votes

  • Movie8.0

    L'homme qui plantait des arbres

    The Man Who Planted Trees

    1987 · 184 votes

  • Movie5.2

    Tendre voyou

    Tender Scoundrel

    1966 · 35 votes

  • Movie6.3

    Woman Times Seven

    1967 · 59 votes

  • Movie6.8

    Il deserto dei Tartari

    The Desert of the Tartars

    1976 · 96 votes

  • Movie6.1
  • Movie6.7

    The Assassination Bureau

    1969 · 95 votes

  • Movie5.5

    Le Capitaine Fracasse

    Captain Fracasse

    1961 · 34 votes

  • Movie6.6

    L'Attentat

    The Assassination

    1972 · 44 votes

  • Movie6.0

    Grosse Fatigue

    Dead Tired

    1994 · 125 votes

  • Movie6.1

    Murphy's War

    1971 · 103 votes

  • Movie6.8

    Le Juge et l'Assassin

    The Judge and the Assassin

    1976 · 145 votes

Series14

  • TV5.7

    Sacrée soirée

    1987 · 5 votes

  • TV6.8

    Champs-Elysées

    1982 · 9 votes

  • TV3.6

    Vivement dimanche

    1998 · 9 votes

  • TV8.5

    Apostrophes

    1975 · 4 votes

  • TV9.5

    Spécial cinéma

    1974 · 2 votes

  • TV6.0
  • TV5.0

    Ciné regards

    1978 · 1 votes

  • TV6.0

    Midi trente

    1972 · 1 votes

  • TV8.0

    Discorama

    1959 · 1 votes

  • TV6.1

    Nulle part ailleurs

    1987 · 8 votes

  • TV6.2

    30 millions d'amis

    1976 · 3 votes

  • TV4.6

    Cérémonie des César

    1976 · 5 votes

  • TV6.2

    Stars 90

    1990 · 2 votes

  • TV6.5