Michel Piccoli, Betrayed by Brigitte Bardot in Jean-Luc
Godard's 'Contempt,' Dies at 94
The Hollywood Reporter
By Jordan Mintzer
May 18, 2020
The busy French actor also starred with Catherine Deneuve in
'Belle de jour,' one of six films he made for Luis Buñuel.
Michel Piccoli, the prolific French actor known for his
leading roles in such films as Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt and
Luis Buñuel's Belle de jour, has died. He was 94.
Piccoli's family shared the news Monday. Agence
France-Presse and French newspaper Le Figaro reported the news, among
others.
Piccoli starred in 230-plus movies throughout a career that
spanned eight decades, beginning in the late 1940s and lasting all the way
until 2015. He also boasted a bountiful stage and television career, performing
in dozens of plays and telefilms.
Among the major filmmakers Piccoli worked with were Godard
(1963's Contempt, 1982's Passion), Luis Buñuel
(1967's Belle de jour, 1969's The Milky Way,
1972's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), Claude Sautet
(1970's The Things of Life, 1971's Max et les
ferrailleurs), Marco Ferreri (1969's Dillinger Is Dead,
1973's La Grande Bouffe), Jean Renoir (1955's French
Cancan), Jacques Rivette (1991's La Belle Noiseuse),
Jean-Pierre Melville (1962's Le Doulos) and Alfred Hitchcock
(playing a Soviet spy in 1969's Topaz).
He received best actor prizes in Cannes
in 1980 for Marco Bellocchio's A Leap in the Dark and a
Silver Bear in Berlin
two years later for Pierre Granier-Deferre's Strange Affair.
Although he was nominated four times for a Cesar award in France and twice for a Molière (his
country's equivalent of the Tony) for playing the lead in King Lear,
he never received either prize during his lifetime.
Piccoli's last major role was as a newly elected pope with
major misgivings about his appointment in Nanni Moretti's Habemus
Papam. The film premiered in competition in Cannes
in 2011 and earned him a David di Donatello award for best actor in Italy.
Discreet and professional, Piccoli often played quiet types
with a dark streak or seductive types who could not be trusted. "When
you're acting, you need to take a step back from yourself and remain extremely
confidential about the character you're playing," he told the French
magazine Télérama in 2011 during one of his final
interviews.
Born in Paris on Dec. 27, 1925, to a violinist father of
Swiss origin and a French mother, Piccoli studied acting and landed his first
major screen role as a coal miner in Louis Daquin's social drama The
Mark of the Day (1949).
He spent the next decade playing secondary roles in various
shorts and features — including Renoir's period piece French
Cancan — before breaking out as a disgruntled lovesick playwright in
Godard's behind-the-scenes drama Contempt.
The film, adapted from Alberto Moravia's novel but inspired
by Godard's personal life, also featured Brigitte Bardot as his wife; she winds
up betraying him for a Hollywood producer
portrayed by Jack Palance. "The character was 99 percent Godard
himself," Piccoli said of the role. "The producers, who were fans of
his, gave him an incredible amount of freedom. I had no idea that we were going
to make a masterpiece."
The first time Piccoli was cast by Spanish auteur Buñuel was
for the 1956 adventure film Death in the Garden, where he played
a priest. In Belle de jour, his character tips off a housewife
(Catherine Deneuve) to a brothel, and he worked with Buñuel on four other
features: Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), The Milky
Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The
Phantom of Liberty (1974).
"He taught me to be modest and to have a sense of
humor," Piccoli said of Buñuel. "Generally, he didn't really like
actors, but he loved being surrounding by an acting troupe. You were cast based
on your personality, not because you were famous."
Piccoli's other major collaboration was with French
writer-director Sautet, for whom he headlined five features throughout the 1970s.
Like The Things of Life, in which he starred opposite Romy
Schneider, the other films — including Vincent, François, Paul and the
Others (1974) and Mado (1976) — were intimate,
emotional dramas where Piccoli often played quietly anguished men in the midst
of midlife crises.
In the '80s and '90s, Piccoli continued to work steadily —
he had eight credits alone in 1982 — starring in such movies as Passion,
Claude Lelouch's Viva la vie (1984), Leos Carax's Mauvais
sang (1986), Louis Malle's May Fools (1990) and
Raoul Ruiz's Genealogies of a Crime (1997).
He memorably played a painter trying to capture the nude
portrait of a young woman in Jacques Rivette's 1991 four-hour drama of artistic
creation and obsession, La Belle Noiseuse, adapted from Balzac's short
story "The Unknown Masterpiece."
On stage, where he began acting in the 1940s, he starred in
plays by Strindberg, Ibsen, Kleist, Chekov, Schnitzler, Molière, Marivaux and
Paddy Chayefsky, among others.
Piccoli also directed three features and wrote the autobiography J'ai
vecu dans mes reves (I Lived in My Dreams) with former Cannes topper Gilles
Jacob. Published in 2017, the book revisits his long and prosperous career and
reveals his thoughts about acting.
"My ideal would be to astonish people through
simplicity and without pretension," he wrote. "A truly great actor
can be extremely modest about his work, in the pleasure he takes in such an
extravagant and amusing profession. His success has nothing to do with being a
mediocre braggart.... I prefer those actors who remain completely
secretive."
Piccoli in 1954 wed Swiss actress Eléonore Hirt, with whom
he had a daughter, Anne-Cordelia. He also was married to French singer Juliette
Greco from 1966 to 1977 and to screenwriter Ludivine Clerc from 1978 until his
death.
PICCOLI, Michel (Jacques
Daniel Michel Piccoli)
Born: 12/27/1925,
Paris, Île-de-France, France
Died: 5/12/2020, France
Michel Piccoii’s
western – actor:
Terreur en Oklahoma
– 1951 (Tommy Goudchote)
Don’t Touch the White Woman! – 1973 (Buffalo Bill)
Far West – 1973 (Indian chief)
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