The acclaimed Jean Louis Trintignant won an Oscar and the Palme d’Or. He died early on Friday in Uzès, the southern Gard region “surrounded by loved ones”, his wife told the AFP news agency.
Born on December 11, 1930 in Piolenc in south France as son of a wealthy industrialist, he studied law in Aix-en-Provence and started theatrical acting in 1950. Trintignant grew up during the hardship of World War Two and was sent as a young conscript to Algeria, then a French colony.
Through a career spanning more than six decades,Trintignant has been noted for playing the dark characters like murderers or jealous husbands. His first major screen appearance was opposite Brigitte Bardot, with whom he reportedly had a brief and much talked-about relationship while making the 1956 romance, And God Created Woman.
Trintignant was generally noted for avoiding publicity, telling French newspaper Nice-Matin in one of his final interviews that fame “didn’t interest” him.
In addition to his passion for acting, he was an avid race car driver, a talent that he put to good use in the 1966 film, A Man and A Woman.
Despite his aversion to publicity, the 2003 murder of his actress-daughter Marie by her musician boyfriend Bertrand Cantat, and the subsequent trial, placed him in the public eye. Trintignant was pictured sobbing at her funeral. Decades previously, he had lost another child, Pauline, as a baby.
After a career spanning more than six decades as an actor and director Trintignant made his final appearance at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019, visibly weakened by his ongoing battle with cancer.
