When in the mid-1970s, Anny Duperey’s gaze met the turquoise blue one of Bernard Giraudeau in New York, where they were both sharing the stage of a play, it was a stroke of lightning: the actors will never leave each other, mixing cinema and private life, juggling their filming, their two children Gaël and Sara, born in 1982 and 1985… and even their farm, in Creuse, which they have renovated themselves for eighteen years. Until their unfortunate separation in 1991.
A separation which had the effect of a bomb for their public: in fact, while many rumors of infidelity were circulating about Bernard Giraudeau, his wife seemed not to want to see anything, and to accept everything. A feeling that she confirmed much later, in Paris Match. “I didn’t want to see, and if I knew, I turned away, telling myself that what he was doing with another was none of my business“, she explained, preferring to close her eyes to the infidelities of her husband.
But if Anny Duperey was ready to accept all the pranks of the one who shared her life, she refused on the other hand to submit to particularly impetuous mood swings. “We had everything to be happy: beautiful children, work, money, and he found that happiness was boring, she told Paris Match about the father of her children. He was mad at everything. He was very negative all the time (…) One day, I said to myself: ‘I will not succeed’, and I left him. I may even have broken up too late.“
A difficult confession for the actress friends or d‘A wonderful family, who then insisted on buying back their house in Creuse after their separation, and who managed to remain on good terms for their children. Sara, following the example of her parents, is also a very popular actress today, leading role in the multi-award winning series The Office of Legends.
After her divorce, Anny Duperey rebuilt her life, but that didn’t stop her from being very present for her ex-companion, whom she describes as “the man of her life“, especially when kidney cancer was detected in the late 2000s.
“We clarified everything and found ourselves absolutely at peace with each other. Illness had given him an admirable career. From this being so dark had emerged an incredible clarity and peace“, she said, touching. Despite all these treatments, Bernard Giraudeau succumbed to this disease in 2010.