Actor, director and producer Jacques Perrin dies aged 80

The actor, filmmaker and producer Jacques Perrin, who had notably played in Donkey Skin Where The Drum Crab and directed the documentary The migrating peopledied Thursday, April 21 in Paris at the age of 80, his family announced to AFP. “The family has the immense sadness to inform you of the disappearance of the filmmaker Jacques Perrin, who died on Thursday April 21 in Paris. He passed away peacefully at the age of 80”, announced his family in a statement sent to AFP by his son, Mathieu Simonet. He had recently appeared in the film Goliath by Frédéric Tellier, with Pierre Niney, Gilles Lellouche and Emmanuelle Bercot.

As an actor, Jacques Perrin, born in Paris on July 13, 1941, appeared in more than 70 films from the 1950s. His soft voice and his gray hair turned white were familiar to the general public, who saw him in particular at Pierre Schoendoerffer (The Drum Crab in 1977, A Captain’s Honor in 1982) and Jacques Demy (The Demoiselles de Rochefort in 1967, Donkey Skin in 1970). Jacques Perrin has also been the co-producer of some fifteen films since the end of the 1960s, including Z by Costa-Gavras (1968) or The chorists (2004) by his nephew Christophe Barratier, in which he also played (8.6 million admissions). In the early 2000s, he also made an appearance as the narrator in The Pact of the Wolvesby Christophe Gans.

A committed defender of nature, he has co-produced several documentaries on this theme, including The Monkey People (1989), Microcosmos: the grass people (1996) or Himalayas: the childhood of a chef (1999). Subsequently, he himself co-directed acclaimed documentaries, including The migrating peopledevoted to birds (2001, 2.8 million spectators in France), then oceans (2010, 2.9 million viewers), awarded the César for best documentary in 2011.