board genius, Michael Bouquet left us on Wednesday April 13 at the age of 96, as indicated by his press service to AFP. “Michel Bouquet died at the end of the morning in a Parisian hospital” we learn. He had accumulated awards and had played for the greatest directors. He remains a great figure of the Paris Conservatory.
Michel Bouquet was born in 1925 in Paris. His early childhood and youth were painful: he spent seven years in boarding school, which was very difficult for him, then, as a teenager, his father was a prisoner of war. To support his family, he did odd jobs before his mother found a job as a milliner. She is passionate about theatre.
From then on, the young Michel Bouquet joined the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and began his career. He met Jean Anouilh who, in 1946, gave him the leading role in Romeo and Jeanettethen follow The appointment of Senlis and The invitation to the castle. This is success! Then he becomes friends with the director Jean Vilar who integrates him into the Festival d’Avignon. He plays many roles like Henry IV, The tragedy of King Richard II, The Miser…
At the end of the 1970s, Michel Bouquet was appointed professor at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art and taught there until 1990. In 1994, he performed The king is dying by Eugène Ionesco, which he repeated many times until 2014.
He also received numerous distinctions: In 1998, he received the Molière for best actor for Chopsthen in 2005 for The king is dying. In 2014, he won an honorary Molière for his entire career. In 2002, he won the César for best actor for how i killed my father then in 2006 for The Walker of the Champ-de-Mars. In 2016, the actor appeared in the play rightly and wrongly by Ronald Harwood.
In terms of private life, Michel Bouquet married Juliet Square in second marriages, also an actress.