PARIS, April 14 — Michel Bouquet, a legend of French stage and screen known for his collaborations with new wave directors Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol, died on Wednesday at the age of 96.

Politicians and leading figures in French theatre and cinema lined up to pay tribute to the man who won major awards for both his theatre and his cinema work.

Bouquet passed away in a Paris hospital, his spokesperson told AFP. 

"I am profoundly sad,” film star Alain Delon told AFP. "Michel Bouquet was a very great actor.”

Recalling the films they had made together, he added: "The only thing left to me are great and beautiful memories.”

"For seven decades, Michel Bouquet brought theatre and cinema to the highest degree of incandescence and truth...,” said French President Emmanuel Macron, paying tribute on Twitter.

Bouquet was as celebrated in France for his theatre as for his cinema career.

He was admired for his 800 performances in the lead role of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist drama Exit the King, and also won praise for his interpretation of the lead role in Moliere’s The Miser.

It was his cinema work however that won him an international audience.

His uncanny rendition of France’s former socialist president Francois Mitterrand in Robert Guediguian’s 2005 film The Last Mitterrand won him his second best actor award at the Cesars, France’s version of the Oscars.

It was his second win, having picked up the same award for Anne Fontaine’s 2001 film How I Killed My Father. 

He also won two Molieres, France’s top theatre award, during his career.

Chabrol, Truffaut, Pinter, Beckett

In his younger years, Bouquet was cast in several classics of 1960s new wave cinema, including Chabrol’s The Unfaithful Wife and later in his career in Cop au Vin. For Truffaut, he acted in The Bride Wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid. 

Born on November 6, 1925 in Paris, Bouquet inherited his love of performing from his mother who took him regularly to the Opera Comique.

"Each time the curtain rose, there was more horror than the war... the unreal world exceeded the real world by far,” he told AFP in 2019. 

"It was the best education of my life.” 

As well as his devotion to the classics, Bouquet played a key role in popularising contemporary foreign writers including Britain’s Harold Pinter and Ireland’s Samuel Beckett.

"In the theatre, the personality of the author is so majestic, whether it be Pinter or Moliere, that all one does is try to convey the word as obediently as possible,” he told AFP in 2019, when he announced his retirement.

Acting, more than a pleasure, was something he needed to do, said Bouquet.

"But it’s interesting,” he said. "To experience something you wouldn’t otherwise experience.

"You don’t risk anything, not anything — except to fall flat on your face.” — AFP