Jacques Boudet

Jacques Boudet — Biography

Over more than sixty years, French stage and screen actor Jacques Boudet was a dependable character player, best known for his long collaboration with director Robert Guédiguian. He died in his sleep at his home in Montpellier on 15 July 2024, aged 89.

He began acting in 1963. Through the 1970s he appeared in films such as La Question, Dracula père et fils, Julie pot de colle and L'Apprenti salaud, and in the 1980s he had great success with Exercises de style. In Volker Schlöndorff's Un amour de Swann he played the Duc de Guermantes, and in Waiting for the Moon he portrayed the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. In Luc Besson's Nikita (1990) he was the pharmacist; he also appeared in Claude Lelouch's Les Misérables (1995) and in Gérard Corbiau's Farinelli. In the 1979 British television play Churchill and the Generals he played Charles de Gaulle.

Later he turned up regularly in Guédiguian's films, among them Marius et Jeannette, La ville est tranquille, Au fil d'Ariane and La Villa. In Claude Chabrol's L'Ivresse du pouvoir (2006) he was the cynical politician with a southern French accent, and in Père et fils the brother of the character played by Philippe Noiret; he also appeared in Le Nom des gens (2010). One of his last films was Little Girl Blue (2023).