Jacques Monod

Jacques Monod — Biography

Jacques Monod was a prolific French character actor who appeared in more than one hundred films between 1947 and 1985. He is associated with François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Roman Polanski's The Tenant, and throughout his career he most often played figures of authority such as judges, prosecutors, police commissioners and tribunal presidents.

Born in Casablanca, Monod appeared in films such as Dr. Knock (1951) and Thérèse Étienne (1958) in the 1950s, and between 1959 and 1965 took many judicial and police roles: he played the examining magistrate Beckman in The Passion of Slow Fire, Commissaire Pranzini in Two Are Guilty, the prosecutor Magnin in Don't Tempt the Devil, the examining judge in The Seventh Juror and a chief superintendent in Requiem pour un caïd; in Les nouveaux aristocrates he was the lawyer Charles. Monsieur Klaus in And Satan Calls the Turns, Joseph Lucas in Crime on a Summer Morning and the Rouquier roles in the Anatomy of a Marriage films belong to the same years.

In later years his parts were more varied: Monsieur Sernet in The Game Is Over, the industrialist Marchal in Under the Sign of the Bull, Monsieur Malaquet in Le Distrait, General Panadon in The Seventh Company Has Been Found, a director in Le Temps des Vacances and a police inspector in Schools Falling Apart. He also appeared in Two Men in Town (1973) and The Tenant (1976). He died in Paris in December 1985.