(Paris) Comedian André Wilms, known for his collaborations with Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, of whom he was the favorite actor, died on Wednesday at the age of 74.
Posted at 9:38
The reason for his death, which occurred in a Paris hospital, was not communicated by his family, his agent Sébastien Perrolat told AFP on Thursday. André Wilms had agreed to several upcoming engagements, he said.
Actor of theater and cinema, director on the boards, André Wilms made himself known to the general public by playing Mr. Le Quesnoy in Life is a long calm river (1988), by Etienne Chatiliez.
His character is a senior executive who addresses his wife and is addressed by his five children. “If you drink cold right after the hot soup, it will blow the enamel off your teeth, Emmanuelle,” he explains, for example.
Then he was appreciated by moviegoers thanks to the tragicomic films of Aki Kaurismäki. Together they turned The bohemian life (1992), Leningrad Cowboys meet Moses (1994), Juha (1999), the harbor (2011), presented at the Cannes Film Festival and The other side of hope (2017). Films marked by poetic dialogues, with a certain tenderness for its characters.
In the harborAndré Wilms was thus a shoe shiner, who reached out to a young undocumented African. The other side of hope orchestrated the meeting between a Syrian migrant stranded against his will in the Finnish grayness and a restaurant owner separated from his alcoholic wife.
“The mouths evolve”
André Wilms laughed when asked about the operation of a set whose boss does not speak the language: “Great directors don’t need to talk! He was telling me : “Play like an old gentleman. Do not run. Don’t Spill Anything”… Everybody’s running in movies these days”.
“Aki is one of the rare directors who does not take the actors for illiterates, although there are many of them”, he said again.
André Wilms has always been wary of the vagaries of fame. Born in 1947 in Strasbourg, where he obtained a plasterer’s CAP, he left his hometown for Toulouse. Having become a machinist in a theatre, he was then tempted to step onto the stage. He achieves this as an extra.
“I was always put in the roles of Nazis, because I spoke good German,” he recalled. This mastery of the language of Goethe will serve him when he goes up to Paris and lands a role in a Faust directed by Klaus Michael Grüber.
“It’s the time that imposes the actors […] Belmondo, everyone thought he was ugly. Depardieu, it was said that he was a young agricultural leader. And so I believe that the mouths evolve with the times, ”he noted. “I would like to say that I am not responsible for my face”.
In his youth, he joined the Gauche prolétarienne, a Maoist organization in the early 1970s. […] so we hoped in the Chinese Revolution […] It all fell apart. I have a few comrades, some have committed suicide, others have become mute. I really believed it. I even believed that theater could change,” he explained.
It must appear one last time on the screen in the Maigret by Patrice Leconte, which will be released on February 23.