Michel Galabru is one of those rare actors who are part of the French cinematographic heritage. “Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez”, “Les sous-doués”, “Grandpa is resisting”… he has chained popular comedies while sometimes playing darker roles such as in “The choice of weapons” or even “The ‘Deadly Summer’. An exceptional filmography spanning seven decades! A earthy character truly adored by the public who died in 2016, at the age of 93.
To pay homage to him, Michel Drucker invited Emmanuelle Galabru, his daughter, this January 22 in his program “Vivement Dimanche”, broadcast on France 3. The young woman confided in all transparency but also modesty on the deep emotional ties that united him to his famous father. Like him, she wanted to be an actress and started in 1988 in the play Le Primerissimo, directed by Eduardo Manet. And played with his father at the cinema in the film “Les Rustres” or at the theater in “On purge bébé”.
“Now that I’m like an idiot on my own…”
Emmanuelle Galabru even confessed in the program “Télématin” that “sometimes, I perceived in his eye that it was the father who was watching”.Sacred pressure! Born in 1976, Emmanuelle is the fruit of the second union in 1990 of the actor with Claude Etevenon, a magistrate. She died in 2015 from Parkinson’s disease. The actress looks back on their love story: “They were from two totally different worlds, when they met my mother was a lawyer (…) It was a great story to the point that it’s true, here it is, my mother left on July 21, 2015, and my father said, when she left: ‘You can’t understand how I loved that woman, now that I’m like a dick on my own, I’m going too. I said, ‘Uh, no…’”, she recalls. Before continuing: “And January 4 is my mother’s birthday and he left that day. That’s how I was able to poetically present to my daughter the departure of her grandfather, of her Papillon – that’s what she called him – by saying to her: ‘Papillon made a very nice birthday present to grandma, he went to join her in heaven to wish her birthday’”, concludes, very moved, the daughter of Michel Galabru.
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VF