JEAN ROCHEFORT

(29 April 1930 - 9 October 2017)

The French character actor Jean Rochefort, who has died aged 87, began his career in cabaret and theatre. Although he became very busy in films and on television, he continued also to act and direct on stage until 1970. He became famous for period action films in France but then made his name as a comic actor. Rochefort’s stunningly gaunt appearance made him constantly recognisable throughout his career. His first cinema feature was in 1956 and he continued in films and TV for the next sixty years, often in productions that were not always seen outside of France. Typical titles of some of his early films were Swords of Blood, The Iron Mask, Outpost in Indo-China, The Corrupt and Trouble Among Widows. From 1964 he was in the popular Angélique period film series about a teenage beauty who becomes involved in politics and with royalty. In Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), William Klein’s satire on the 1960s, Rochefort played a character called Grégoire Pecque. Two Weeks in September starred Brigitte Bardot. Other films that did reach the UK include The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe (and its sequel) for Yves Robert (a director Rochefort worked with often), Robert’s Pardon Mon Affaire (and its sequel), Bertrand Tavernier’s The Watchmaker of St Paul and Luis Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty. Rochefort was a delight in Patrice Leconte’s The Hairdresser’s Husband and in Ridicule and also in the Pagnol story directed by Yves Robert, Le chateau de ma mere. He played a contract killer in Wild Target (which was re-made in English, with Bill Nighy), Robert Altman cast him as a cop in Prêt-à-Porter, Guillaume Canet used him in Tell No One, and he was hilarious as the harassed Maitre D in Mr Bean’s Holiday. Terry Gilliam wanted him to play Don Quixote but the 2002 film, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, never go off the ground. However, he did appear in Lost in La Mancha, a documentary about the failed project. Jean Rochefort was married twice, firstly to Alexandra Moscwa (three children) and then Françoise Vidal (two children) and he had a son with actress Nicole Garcia.

MICHAEL DARVELL