The actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, the mythical face of French cinema for his performance in films such as Z or A man and a woman, has died at the age of 91, according to what his family told the French press.
Jean-Louis Trintignant died “quietly, as a result of old age, this morning at his home in the Gard department, surrounded by his loved ones,” said Jean-Louis Trintignant’s wife, Mariane Hoepfner Trintignant.
With more than 120 films behind him, Trintignant was for decades one of the essentials of French cinema, from its beginnings in 1956, under the orders of Roger Vadim, Claude Lelouch, Costa-Gravras, François Truffaut or Michael Haneke, creator of one of his last memorable roles, Love.
The shyest actor in French cinema and theater, he ended up becoming an icon for his discreet charm and his “normal” man profile, which he highlighted in films such as “And God Created Woman”, with Brigitte Bardot, who gave him international fame.
He was born on December 11, 1930, in Piolenc, in the southern region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, where he settled again to live the last years of his life, surrounded by the olive trees and vines that he liked to take care of.
Your shyness issues
After starting to study law, he moved to Paris at the age of 20 to study film and drama classes, which helped him cope with his shyness, which led him to say that “for years” he was an actor who gave “a bit of shame.”
In the 1970s he tried his luck as a film director with two black humor films that did not have much of a career, and it was actually after he turned forty that he gained more weight in the industry, with that mysterious, ironic, and almost weak image.
His personal life was especially marked twenty years ago by the murder of his daughter Marie Trintignant, beaten to death by her partner, an event from which he never managed to recover, as he himself recently acknowledged.
In 2019, he went back up the steps of the Cannes Festival with Anouk Aimée and Claude Lelouch for the premiere of The Best Years of a Life, in which the couple from A Man and a Woman met again fifty years later.
“He was a huge actor. He was working all his life, he made great films, ”summarized his ex-wife Nadine Trintignant in brief telephone statements to the French news channel BFMTV.
Amelia Warner
Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.