What is the nobility of a supporting actor? Perhaps the nobility of taking a back seat to his characters, and ending up looking like someone everyone knows but can't identify. Jacques Boudet was such a person. Tall, with a long face and big, cooing voice, he fell into a area of familiarity that brought together friendly patriarchs, tradesmen and dignitaries.
A native of southern France, capable of acting characters with heavy accents, he was in part bound to have a regional fame. Specifically, he represented two faces of the city of Marseille: The first linked to the films of Robert Guédiguian, the second to the soap opera Plus Belle la Vie ("More Beautiful Life"), in which he was a recurring figure. The actor died during the night of July 14-15, at his home in the Hérault department of southern France, as announced by his agent Pierrette Panou.
Jacques Boudet was born in Montpellier on April 15, 1935. After the springboard of university theater, he made his stage debut in the early 1960s. He then took part in the adventure of the decentralization of French theatre, notably alongside Jean-Marie Serreau (1915-1973), under whose direction he performed Aimé Césaire's Une Tempête ("A Tempest," 1969), Béatrice du Congo ("Beatrice of the Congo" 1971), by Bernard Dadié, which propelled him to his first appearance at the Avignon Festival, then Paol Keineg's Le Printemps des Bonnets Rouges ("The Spring of the Red Caps," 1972).
In 1980, he forged a name for himself performing, in duet with Danièle Lebrun, Exercices de Style (Exercises in Style), by Raymond Queneau, a droll language juggling act staged by Jacques Seiler (1928-2004) and revived many times until the mid-1990s. He also spoke the texts of Edward Bond for Patrice Chéreau (1944-2013), Shakespeare for Benno Besson (1922-2006), Harold Pinter for Jean-Michel Ribes, Thomas Bernhard for Robert Cantarella, and performed Molière's L'Avare (The Miser) in a staging by Roger Planchon (1931-2009) in 1986.
Shortly after his theatrical debut, Boudet moved on to a parallel career in film, where he played a host of small, colorful roles. He played the Duc de Guermantes in the French-German co-production Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love) (1983), Volker Schlöndorff's adaptation of Marcel Proust's novel; a troubled senator, with a resemblance to Charles Pasqua, in Claude Chabrol's L'Ivresse du Pouvoir (Comedy of Power 2006); and had a cameo in Jean-Pierre Mocky's in Agent Trouble (1987).
He lent his face to films by Bertrand Blier (Merci la Vie, 1991), Betrand Tavernier (L.627, 1992; Laissez-passer [Safe Conduct], 2002), Claude Lelouch (Tout ça... pour ça!, 1993; Les Misérables, 1995) and Etienne Chatiliez (Tanguy, 2001; La Confiance Règne, 2004). In Père et Fils ("Father and Son," 2003), Michel Boujenah poked fun at his resemblance to Philippe Noiret, with whom he was sometimes confused, by casting him in the role of his brother.
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