jean rochefort

Born in Dinan on the Cotes d’Armor, Jean Rochefort studied at the select Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen. At the age of 19, he was already very clear that he was going to be an actor, so he enrolled at the Center d’Art Dramatique on rue Blanche in Paris and later at the National Conservatory.

After his military service, Jean Rochefort joined the Grenier Hussenot Company for seven years, where his ease in both comedy and drama was striking. In 1960 he married Alexandra Moscwa, with whom he soon had two children, Marie and Julien.

As soon as he became a father, and therefore in need of funds, he began to give priority to his career in film and television, always better paid than the theater, which in any case he has never completely abandoned. He appears as a swordsman in Captain Fracassa , where he is integrated as a supporting cast in a cast that includes Jean Marais , Philippe Noiret and Louis de Funès .

He was so good at it that at that time he was typecast to a certain extent in the adventure genre, as he participated in titles such as The Iron Mask (1962) , by Henri Decoin , and also in Cartouche and The Tribulations of a Chinese in China of the specialist Philippe de Broca , who also had him under his command in the most comical The Devil by the Tail . With his action movies, she discovers his passion for horses. He ended up becoming a breeder and has even been an equestrian advisor on filming.

In the 70s he established himself in France, especially after putting himself under the orders of the Aragonese Luis Buñuel , in El fantasma de la libertad , where he plays a guy whose daughter has disappeared at school, in some sequences in which the teacher gave rein unleash his surrealism. Particularly noteworthy is his work as a curator, again alongside Philippe Noiret , in The Watchmaker of Saint Paul , an adaptation of a novel by Georges Simenon , which marks Bertrand Tavernier ‘s feature film debut . For his work, Rochefort received the César for Best Secondary, but shortly after the same award would come to him in the leading role category, for Le Crabe-Tambour, by Pierre Schoendoerffer, where he was a frigate captain about to die. In 1999 he would receive his third César in the whole of his entire career.

The actor found great success with his collaborations with Patrice Leconte, such as Tandem , The Man on the Train , I Killed Her Because She Was Mine , Ridicule. No one is safe and especially The Hairdresser’s Husband , who made Rochefort known internationally in some countries like Spain. “Curiously, it was less popular in France. I have never been able to explain why,” the actor commented.

Rochefort is always as believable as he is surprising, in roles such as the man trapped in a restricted area of ​​the airport for losing his passport in In Transit – a precedent for Steven Spielberg ‘s The Terminal . He had great enthusiasm for playing Don Quixote, in  The Man Who Killed Don Quixote , by  Terry Gilliam , which was ruined by the accumulation of misfortunes during filming, including the double herniated disc suffered by Rochefort, who has since he cannot ride a horse, as he was so passionate about. When the director resumed the project and managed to finish it, he had replaced him with  Jonathan Pryce. But other international filmmakers have directed the actor, such as the Argentine  Alejandro Agresti  ( The Wind Took What ), the American  Robert Altman  ( Prêt-à-porter ) and the Spanish  Fernando Trueba  ( The Artist and the Model ). He retired from the cinema after starring under the orders of his compatriot Philippe Le Guay in the dramatic comedy Floride , from 2015.