Mathy

Canadian Press

PARIS (AP) - Beloved French actor Philippe Noiret, whose neighbourly face was among the most familiar on the silver screen in France, died Thursday of cancer.

He was 76. The exact circumstances surrounding his death were not immediately known. Friends said he had been battling cancer. Noiret made more than 125 movies in his 55 years entertaining on stage and in the cinema. Among his first big successes was Louis Malle’s 1960 movie “Zazie dans le metro” (Zazie in the Metro).

Among the doyens of French cinema, Noiret made his last movie this year, “Trois Amis” (Three Friends) under director Michel Boujenah.

With a face and a bearing that could portray both the middle class man or the elegant aristocrat - but not a romantic hero - Noiret conquered his audience with his exceptional skills as an actor. He plumbed his Everyman face to play a variety of roles, calling himself an “artisan actor.”

Above all a French star, Noiret had his share of international acclaim, notably in Guiseppe Tornatore’s 1988 “Cinema Paradiso” and in the 1994 hit “Il Postino,” (The Postman) in which he played Pablo Neruda, a poet and diplomat who counsels his mailman. Noiret won his first Cesar, the French version of the Oscar award, in 1976 for the dramatic “Vieux Fusil” (Old Gun) with Romy Schneider and gained a second in 1990 with “La Vie et rien d’autre” (Life and Nothing Else).

Praise poured in as soon as Noiret’s death was made public, with French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres calling the actor “a great among the greats.”

For Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, the worlds of theatre and film have suddenly found themselves orphaned by Noiret’s death.

“Through his voice, his allure, his panache, Philippe Noiret knew how to seize and express something within the French soul,” Villepin said in a statement.

“The silhouette and the voice, so tender and familiar, will be missed by all.”

Over the years, Noiret worked with all of France’s top directors, from Claude Chabrol to Bertrand Tavernier, playing both dramatic and comic roles and all manner of middle-class men.

Bertrand Blier, who made nine movies with Noiret, said his acting and his humanity were both exceptional.

“He is someone who counted in my life…someone who took you by the hand,” Blier said, praising Noiret’s “paternal” qualities that he felt despite his own advanced age.

For actor Lambert Wilson, Noiret was “an extremely just, moving actor.” Above all, he was a man with a heart, Wilson said on France-Info radio.

“The art of living, companionship were fundamental things in his life,” Wilson said.

“He was such a charming man, so attentive to others with lots of humour,” but also “terribly sane and attentive to the quality of life of others and his own.”

Born Oct. 1, 1933, in the northern French city Lille, Noiret began life as an actor with theatre studies, touring with the Theatre Nationale Populaire in Paris. His movie debut was in 1956, in Agnes Varda’s “La Pointe courte.” For a decade he was a regular in films, having his first starring role in 1967 with “Alexandre le Bienheureux” in which he portrayed a man with a passion for laziness.

Patrice Leconte, who directed Noiret in two films, said he learned only recently that Noiret was battling cancer. Speaking on France-Info, he remembered the actor who could evoke both the zany and the deadly serious.

“He had a notable side, but behind this…there was craziness,” Leconte said.

“That is what I want to remember tonight.”

Funeral plans were not immediately known. Noiret is survived by his wife, Monique and a daughter, Frederique.