RIP Philippe Leroy

 

French actor Philippe Leroy has died

RaiNews.it

6/1/2024

He was 93 years old and had been ill for some time. He was one of the most popular French stars in Italy, on TV he was Leonardo da Vinci and Yanez de Gomera in Sandokan. In 2008 he played the role of the bishop alongside Terence Hill in the fiction "Don Matteo"

Almost 200 appearances between films and dramas, from "The Hole" by Jacques Becker (1960) to the latest successes as Bishop of Terence Hill in the fiction "Don Matteo". Philippe Leroy, the aristocrat lent to the cinema, died this evening in Rome after a long illness. He was 94 years old and Italy was his second home.

Born in Paris on October 15, 1930, Philippe Leroy-Beaulieu was the heir to an aristocratic family with six generations of soldiers and ambassadors behind him. Disdainful of his title of marquis, at the age of 17 he embarked as a cabin boy on a ship to America like a Joseph Conrad character. Returning to France, he joined the Foreign Legion and went to fight in Indochina and Algeria, enlisted as a paratrooper. He returned from Algeria highly decorated, but decided to abandon his military career and find a job. Any one, even in a circus (he worked with horses) or as a navigator of off-shore boats.

A relative opened the way for him in the cinema, his acting career began with the director Jacques Becker: struck by his lean physique, by the air of someone who has seen danger up close and knows weapons, he enlisted him in the cast of the film "The Hole" (1960) in the part of a prisoner who tries to escape from prison, a criminal, but human and full of dignity.

Other performances followed in France, but, above all, from 1961 he began to work mainly in Italy, where he immediately participated in two films that exemplify his main future roles: "Manhunt" by Riccardo Freda, in which he plays a bandit wanted and then captured by the police; "Lions in the Sun" by Vittorio Caprioli, loosely based on the novel "Mortally Wounded" by Raffaele La Capria. Since then, in both commercial and arthouse films, and also in numerous television productions (in which he took part since the early seventies), Leroy alternated parts of pure villain with others of decadent aristocrat.

During the 1990s, in addition to working in television, he played small roles in films such as Luc Besson's "Nikita" (1990), Edouard Niermans' "The Return of Casanova" (1991) and Klaus Maria Brandauer's "Mario and the Magician" (1993). In 1999 he participated in the comedy "Il pesce innamorato" by Leonardo Pieraccioni and in 2001 in the drama "Vajont - La diga del disonore" by Renzo Martinelli.

Television was the second turning point

In 1971, television, an instrument of popular consensus, offered him the second turning point in his career: Renato Castellani summoned him and put him in the shoes of Leonardo da Vinci in the drama of the same name. His temperament was finally reunited with the profession 5 years later: in the role of the phlegmatic Portuguese Yanez de Gomera in Sergio Sollima's "Sandokan" he became a real star and sculpted an unforgettable Salgarian incarnation, loved by 30 million viewers per episode. Although he had tried his hand at the theatre, although he had also acted for Godard, Comencini, Luigi Magni, Jacques Deray, Dario Argento, Luc Besson, although he had played the role of priests (Ignazio de Loyola in "Be Good If You Can"), officers ("R.A.S." by Yves Boisset), ex-Nazis ("Night Porter" by Liliana Cavani), it was TV that offered him the best roles. It is right to remember him at least in "Quo Vadis?", "The General", "Elisa di Rivombrosa", "Inspector Coliandro" and even "I Cesaroni".

The general public also remembers him for the role of the bishop in the fiction "Don Matteo" alongside Terence Hill, seven episodes aired on Rai1 in the 2008-2009 season.

LEROY, Philippe (Philippe Marie Paul Leroy-Beaulieu)

Born: 10/15/1930, Paris, Île-de-France, France

Died: 6/1/2024, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Philippe Leroy’s westerns – actor:

Yankee – 1966 (Yankee)

Panhandle Caliber .38 - 1971 (General Briscott)

A Man Called Blade – 1977 (Edward M. McGowan)