At the same time actor, director and committed producer, Jacques Perrin, who died Thursday at the age of 80, will have marked by his roles in “Le Crabe-tambour” or “Peau d’âne” and his films on nature, from “Migratory people” to “Oceans”.
Member since 2019 of the Academy of Fine Arts, actor in more than 70 feature films at the cinema since the 1950s, notably with Pierre Schoendoerffer and Jacques Demy, he will also have been the co-producer of around fifteen films since the end of the 1960s, from “Z” by Costa-Gavras to “Himalaya: the childhood of a chef”, and lent his soft voice to many works.
Child of the ball, Jacques Perrin was born in Paris on July 13, 1941 under the name of Jacques André Simonet. Son of a manager at the Comédie-Française who became a prompter at the TNP, Alexandre Simonet, and an actress, Marie Perrin, he went on stage at the age of 15, then entered the Conservatory.
He began his film career in 1958 with an appearance in “Les Tricheurs” by Marcel Carné, before a first important role in “La Fille à la suitcase” by Valerio Zurlini.
Actor with the appearance of a young romantic first, he then played in particular in “La Vérité” by Henri-Georges Clouzot or “Compartment tueurs” by Costa-Gavras, but distinguished himself above all in the films of Pierre Schoendoerffer, starting with “La 317e section” (1965), in which he played a second lieutenant. A film that “means a lot in his career”, he will say.
Then he will turn with him “The Crabe-drum” (1977) and “The Honor of a captain” (1982).
The other great director who counted in his career at the time was Jacques Demy, who made him work alongside Catherine Deneuve in “Les Demoiselles de Rochefort” (1967) and “Peau d’âne” (1970).
“That he called me was a surprise, I did not know the filmmakers of the New Wave, even if Jacques Demy, he was always a bit apart. For + Les Demoiselles de Rochefort +, I told him that I didn’t know how to dance or sing. No problem, he replied,” he said.
“Take up arms”
Memorable in the costume of the prince of “Peau d’âne”, he will continue to play regularly in the cinema, with certain outstanding roles such as in “Cinema Paradiso” (1989), while starting a producer activity, through which he strives to support films that are committed to or defend the planet.
He produced films such as “Z” by Costa-Gavras (1968), which won an Oscar, followed by “State of Siege” (1972) and “Special Section” (1974), or even “La Victoire en chantant” ( 1976) by Jean-Jacques Annaud, before turning to documentaries devoted to animals and the environment, with the exception of a few films such as the great public success “Les Choristes” (2004) by Christophe Barratier and his 8, 6 million entries.
A committed defender of nature, he co-produced “The Monkey People” (1989), “Microcosmos: the people of the grass” (1996), which earned him the César for best producer the following year, or “Himalaya: the childhood of a chef” (1999), before co-directing a number of notable documentaries himself.
“To be interested in nature is to take up arms to defend it. Cinema is obviously one of the most relevant weapons, emotion has more resonance than speech,” he said.
In 2001, he successfully co-signed “Le Peuple migrateur”, devoted to birds, which attracted nearly 2.8 million spectators in France, then “Océans” (2010, 2.9 million spectators), rewarded with the César du best documentary in 2011, two epic shoots.
His very last role in the cinema, in “Goliath”, released in March, echoed his environmental fights: in this thriller around pesticides, he teams up with a formidable lobbyist from the phytosanitary industry, camped by Pierre Niney.