Claude Rich

Biography: life and films

Claude Rich is one of the most prolific and best loved French actors of his generation. In a career that spans seven decades, he has notched up over 130 film and television appearances whilst simultaneously pursuing an active stage career. Not only has he worked with established filmmakers of considerable repute - Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, Édouard Molinaro and François Truffaut - he has also lent his talents to promising newcomers, such as Safy Nebbou and Valérie Lemercier. As adept at playing comedy as serious drama, Rich is one of French cinema's great chameleons, a truly multi-faceted performer. Which other actor could get away with playing the father of the painter Toulouse-Lautrec, the 19th century politician Charles Talleyrand and Panoramix the Druid?

Claude Robert Rich was born in Strasbourg, France, on 8th February 1929. His father was an engineer who died from Spanish flu at the age of 40. After his father's death, Rich and his family moved to Paris when he was six. It was whilst he was at school that he started putting on marionette shows and found his vocation for the stage. He helped to support his mother by working in a bank whilst taking drama lessons under Charles Dullin, before entering the Paris Conservatoire. On graduating from this elite drama school, Rich was soon treading the boards with the Comédie-Française, and he made his screen debut in René Clair's Les Grandes Manoeuvres (1955).

Claude Rich's film career began modestly enough, with small roles in Michel Deville's first solo film Ce soir ou jamais (1961) and Julien Duvivier's La Chambre ardente (1961). He had a noticeable presence in Jean Renoir's army comedy Le Caporal épinglé (1962) and Georges Lautner's gangster parody Les Tontons flingueurs (1963), and spars with Louis de Funès brulliantly in Édouard Molinaro's Oscar (1967). Alain Resnais then gave him one of his most important roles, the lead in his weird sci-fi drama Je t'aime, je t'aime (1968). That same year he made a notable appearance in François Truffaut's La Mariée était en noir (1968). In the 1970s, Rich was more preoccupied with his stage work, but contributed to several interesting films of the decade, including Pierre Granier-Deferre's policier Adieu poulet (1975) and Pierre Schoendoerffer's maritime drama Le Crabe-Tambour (1977).

During the 1970s, Rich impressed the critics with his performances in several prestigious stage productions, including Peter Luke's Hadrien VII (1970/2), Sacha Guitry's Jean de La Fontaine (1973) and Shakespeare's Pericles (1977/8). He was particularly acclaimed for his lead role in Franco Zeffirelli's Comédie-Française production of Alfred de Musset's Lorenzaccio in 1976. One of the highlights of his stage career was Jean-Pierre Miquel's production of Jean-Claude Brisville's play Le Souper in 1989, in which he played Talleyrand opposite Claude Brasseur's Fouché. Three years later, both actors reprised their roles in a film adaptation of the play, which won Rich the Best Actor César in 1993.

In 2002, Claude Rich received an honorary César for his life's work. Throughout the 2000s, the actor was as busy as ever, taking on an ever expanding range of roles in films as diverse as Le Coût de la vie (2003), Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (2003), Président (2006), Le Crime est notre affaire (2008) and Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera (2009). More recently, he has cropped up in Nicolas Brossette's 10 jours en or (2012) and Pascal Bonitzer's Cherchez Hortense (2012), for which he received his fifth César nomination.

Filmography

Click here to view complete list of films...