On May 12, Michel Piccoli died “in the arms of his wife Ludivine and his children Inord and Missia after a stroke” according to AFP.
With this loss, French cinema has lost one of its most iconic actors.
Very early on, he began in theater before his breakthrough in the ‘50s in the iconic French Cancan directed by Jean Renoir!
Subsequently, Michel Piccoli worked with some of the biggest names in French cinema, including Jean Renoir, Alain Resnais, Jacques Demy, Agnes Varda and Louis Malle, and European giants like Luis Buñuel, Constantin Costa-Gavras, Marco Ferreri and Alfred Hitchcock.
Gaumont and Michel Piccoli worked together on a total of 19 films. 19 opportunities to admire the extraordinary talent of this one-of-a-kind actor.
He took part in projects with directors whose careers were long-established yet fresh, as demonstrated by his decision to work with Jacques Doillon on The Prodigal Daughter in 1981.
This very sad loss has rocked French cinema and all its fans, as demonstrated by this tweet following the news.
Michel Piccoli (1925-2020) à la Une de la presse ce mardi matin... pic.twitter.com/wKBY40Eugj
— Destination Ciné (@destinationcine) May 19, 2020
According to Gilles Jacob and all the actor’s admirers, he has left behind “150 characters, all different and all brought to life in his own unique way”
