French actor Michel Blanc, popular film figure The Bronzeddied in the night from Thursday to Friday at the age of 72, the press officer for his main films, Laurent Renard, announced to AFP, confirming information from Paris Match.
He suffered a heart attack in the evening and was transported in serious condition to a Parisian hospital, his entourage told AFP.
“Fuck Michel… What did you do to us…”, launched as condolences on Instagram the actor Gérard Jugnot, his sidekick from the flagship troupe of Splendid and the Tanned.
“Michel, my friend, my brother, my partner,” reacted on Instagram the actress Josiane Balasko, another figure from this group of actors from the 70s and 80s.
Popular French actor, Michel Blanc alternated between laughter and emotion, exploring with finesse the human soul, in front of and behind the camera.
“You never know, on a misunderstanding, it could work…” For many, he will forever remain Jean-Claude Dusse, the bald and mustachioed wimp of the Tanneda film released in 1978 in which he plays a failed flirt always convinced of being able to “finish” and whose lines have passed down to posterity.
Big success then even bigger hit, a year later, with Tanned people go skiingboth films have become cult.
Generations have laughed when they heard “Forget that you don’t have a chance, go ahead, go for it!” You never know, a misunderstanding could work out” or “Possibly, if you were at the end of your tether, could we consider concluding? »
This character, as exasperating as he is touching, for a time confined Michel Blanc in the roles of hypochondriac or clumsy person.
The actor had already proven himself in the mid-1970s by filming for Bertrand Tavernier (Let the party begin), Claude Miller (The Best Way to Walk) or Roman Polanski (The Tenant).
“Evening wear”, the turning point
After the enormous public success of Walk in the shade (1984), his first film as a director, the actor finally knew how to bounce back and broaden his range.
He is the first to escape from the “Splendid” gang, named after this Parisian café-theatre founded with high school friends and the breeding ground for actors who became famous.
And explodes the “glass ceiling” thanks to the transgressive Evening wear (1986) by director Bertrand Blier.
He plays the moving Antoine, who becomes infatuated with Gérard Depardieu and cross-dresses. The role, crowned with the Best Actor Prize at Cannes, marks a turning point in his career.
Born on April 16, 1952 in Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine), Michel Blanc comes from a rather modest background, with a moving father who ended up as a middle manager and a typist mother who became an accountant. Very loving parents who overprotect this only son, born with a heart murmur.
Shy, puny, great hypochondriac — “I am the pioneer of hydroalcoholic gel! » -, young Michel quickly loses his hair and will rely more on self-deprecation and humor, sometimes caustic, than on his physique.
“I didn’t love myself”
“I have an advantage over late bald people, I have never associated baldness with age,” joked the man who has long felt bad about himself.
Since childhood, he has been passionate about classical music. At the age of 20, he even tried to make a career as a pianist. He devoted six to seven hours a day to it but gave up quite quickly, understanding that he would never be “the new Arthur Rubinstein”.
Change of direction with the adventure of Splendid, where he joins his group of friends from Neuilly high school, Gérard Jugnot, Thierry Lhermitte and Christian Clavier.
“As I didn’t like myself, I wanted to play characters who weren’t me.”
“He is a lonely, wounded, disconcerted man,” said his friend, the writer Françoise Sagan. “I am an anxious person who prefers action to depression,” said the person concerned.
Throughout his career, also spent in the theater, this hard worker and perfectionist knows how to use his complexes and his writing talent to explore disenchantment and shape the characters in his films, particularly those he directs as Severe Fatigue (1994) and Kiss whoever you want (2002).
He is convincing in the dramatic register, portraying the disturbing Mr Hire (1989), after Simenon, or a homosexual doctor at the start of AIDS in The Witnesses (2007) by André Téchiné. Or even on television in The Dominici Affair (2003).
After the failed meeting of the third opus of Tanned in 2006, Michel Blanc, nominated four times for the César for best actor, won the precious statuette in 2012 for his unexpected second role as chief of staff in the political thriller State Exercise.