He was an esteemed figure in French theater and a familiar face in our popular cinema. Jacques Sereys, honorary member of the Comédie-Française, had devoted his life to the authors of the repertoire, but it was his very destiny, brilliant and unexpected, through environments, times and temperaments, which seemed drawn from a play. by Carlo Goldoni.
Born in 1928, Jacques Sereys was brought up in Marseille by his mother, an embroiderer. In order to help the latter, at the age of fourteen, the one then called “Jacky” found a job at Crédit Lyonnais. However, he was less attracted by account books and their figures than by authors whose words soon obsessed him. Endowed with a loquaciousness and a free spirit, he felt called by a vocation, that of actor. He “went up” to the capital, taking care to erase his southern accent and accentuate his rigor in his study. At the age of nineteen, Jacques Sereys passed the competition for the Conservatoire where he was admitted.
But it was at the Comédie-Française, where he entered in 1955 and where he remained until 1965, that he became, elegant, falsely discreet, stunningly learned, the actor he would be throughout the decades. careers. Jacques Sereys arrived when a sparkling generation was already sharing the stage of Molière’s house. In this game of friendship and chance, Sereys met Jean Piat or Robert Hirsch, Jacques Charon. He also found love there, in the person of the actress Philippine de Rothschild, performing on stage under the name of Philippine Pascale, whom he married and with whom he had two children.
At the Comédie Française, where Jacques Sereys returned from 1977 to 1997, and where he was nicknamed “Mouchy”, he did not hesitate to move from tragedy to the boulevard. He offered them to the general public, on the stage of the Palais-Royal and, later, also, under the cameras of “At the theater this evening”. He marked the institution with his longevity, his eclecticism, his enthusiasm. It is thus Jacques Sereys who allowed Giraudoux to integrate the repertoire. During the 2007-2008 season, a major tribute was paid to this “honorary member” at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier.
Jacques Sereys also made incursions into the cinema. He, the child of a popular and warm Marseille, loved to interpret the eminences of Paris: Minister of Defense with Jean-Marie Poiré (“Operation Corned-Beef”, 1990) or Prime Minister with Francis Girod ( “The Savage State”, 1977). He was also the Machiavellian adversary of Yves Montand in “I… comme Icare” by Henri Verneuil in 1979. In total, from his roles with Louis Malle or Claude Sautet to his appearances with Rappeneau or Pascal Thomas forty years later, Jacques Sereys shot more than twenty-five films.
But it was for the theater that Jacques Sereys consumed himself. He adapted the texts of his favorite authors, for singles-on-stage: “On the side of Proust”, which earned him a Molière for best actor in 2006, “Cocteau-Marais” around Jean Cocteau in 2009, or ” If Guitry was told to me”, created in 2014. Between the lucidity of the first, the happy fantasy of the second, and the joyful irony of the third, Sereys composed a self-portrait on the boards.
Jacques Sereys served texts which, by their melancholy or their panache, their liveliness or their subtlety, said everything regarding a certain French spirit. From his first roles to his productions, he was the tireless actor and author of a demanding but popular repertoire. The President of the Republic and his wife salute a man who had devoted his life to the theater, an art in which he had interpreted many roles and experienced almost all professions. They send their heartfelt condolences to his children, Camille and Philippe, as well as to his loved ones.
