Olivier Marchal, to find this evening in the film The Crimson Rivers on France 2, is a confirmed actor, who has already proven himself. But his career as an actor would perhaps never have seen the light of day without the valuable advice of his companion in the 80s, who was none other than Michèle Laroque. A period of his life to which he returned in 2020 during his time on the show I love you etc. on France 2.“I met her, I was a cop in the anti-terrorist section, and we went out to clubs a lot with my group” he said, before going into a little more detail.
“And I had met an architect from Nice who was having a party at his house, and since she is from Nice, she was at the party. But she was starting in Paris, she was at the Blancs-Manteaux, she was playing a show called Save the baby women. I was not at all in the theater yet. We had a little crush. But I couldn’t see myself saying to my father: ‘I’m going to Paris’. It was a little…” he remembered, he who had no ambition to become an actor, despite his experience in the theater with the Jesuits of the Saint-Joseph-de-Tivoli high school in Bordeaux.
A twisted destiny
But it was without counting on Michèle Laroque, who finally managed to convince him to embark on this field. “She said to me: ‘If you want to be an actor, you have to try’. She’s the one who made me rehearse my audition“. After having taken numerous theater lessons at the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, while continuing his job as a PJ inspector, he quickly had his first experience in the cinema under conditions which were familiar to him since he portrayed the role of a detective in the film Don’t wake a sleeping cop. He definitively left the police in 1994 in order to devote himself entirely to his career as an actor.
On the other hand, his relationship with Michèle Laroque will not have lasted. But he will have rebuilt his life with Catherine Quiniou, with whom he married in 1995. They also became parents together of Léa (in 1994), Zoé (in 1998), Ninon (in 2006) and Basile (in 2009) . Michèle Laroque, meanwhile, married the director Dominique Deschamps, the father of her daughter Oriane (born in 1995), before meeting the Mayor of Troyes François Baroin, with whom she still shares her life.