Actor Jean-Pierre Bakri dies of cancer

Sophie Lobby
France Media

Jean-Pierre Bakry is accustomed to the roles of sad and disappointed heroes, but deeply human, and has been awarded many times as an actor, but also as a screenwriter.

Thus he won a Five Cesars, a four-fold trophy for best screenplay with his ex-girlfriend Agnes Jaoui (for Smoking / No smokingAnd the Family resemblanceAnd the We know the song And the The taste of othersAnd one-time Best Actor in a Supporting Role for We know the song.

Nominated six times for the Cesar Award for Best Actor (for Kennedy and meAnd the The taste of othersAnd the EmotionsAnd the Search for HortenseAnd the The very private life of Mr. Sim And the Meaning of the party).

Sometimes he is categorized as a one-role actor, that is the role of the Eternal Furious, but he hates even though one affixes “this label” to him: “I don’t always play grumpy characters! She won the actor with Agence France-Presse in 2015.

For Bakri, who does not like heroes and “does not believe in the bright kinds of happiness,” “the pursuit of living experience, sobriety, humility” and “refusal to cheat” was tantamount to faith.

In the roles he chose, or the ones he wrote with Anias Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bakri defended cultural sectarianism, conformism, churches, and subservience …

It was his father who transmitted these morals to him, during his childhood in Castiglione, Algeria, where he was born in May 1951. The postman, worked at the weekend in the city cinema and discovered the seven^e Art for his son.

In 1962 the family emigrated to Cannes, where Jean-Pierre Bakri began studying literature.

When he gets to Paris and pushes the door to drama class, it is the writing that interests him in the first place.

That jacre

In 1977 he wrote his first play, SimplyThree others soon followed. At the same time, Jean-Pierre Bakri played small roles in television and on stage.

In 1982, his character appeared as a pimp in the Great forgiveness By Alexander Arkady made it known to the general public.

Two years later, he was nominated for the Cesar Award for Best Supporting Actor for his outdated and spoken policeman’s character. Subway By Luc Besson.

But his talent only exploded with Agnes Jaoui, whom he met in 1987 at the theater birthday De pinter.

Very quickly, “Jacqui” – as Renee called it – combined the pungent sense of humor and the observant talent for writing with four hands.

Their first play Kitchen and outbuildings (1992) is a fast-paced movie adaptation success, just like Family resemblance (1996).

Alain Renee invites them to scenarios Smoking / No smoking (1993) and We know the song (1997).

Then Agnes Jawi goes behind the camera to The taste of others (2000).

In recent years, the actor has been filming less, limiting himself to two films a year and claiming the right to be lazy.

In 2017, he also starred in Very cold By Gerard W. Bautonnier Santa and Company By Alan Shabat.

And in Meaning of the party Olivier Nacach and Eric Toledano, irresistible as Max, a wedding planner where nothing goes as planned, an eternal grumpy role tailored. Among his most recent films, Public placeJavanese genera, 2018.

Some reactions

“Immense sadness, formidable actor!” Actress Alexandra Lamy launched on Twitter, borrowing from the favorite vocabulary of Bakry’s characters on screen.

Jean-Pierre Bakri “He was not despised, but was angry at the stupidity of man. The former president of the Cannes Film Festival, Gilles Jacob, testified on social media that he did not have his tongue in his pocket, recalling this “categorical and hesitant voice, sharp and stuttering, caressing and singing.”

Whether or not they crossed paths with him on set, many of the film personalities have applauded him: from Nathalie Baye (“The wonderful, wonderful Jean-Pierre Bacri … left us immense grief …”) to Gilles Lellouche (“tremendous sadness” ) Via Michelle Larroque (“It will forever be in my heart. I find it difficult to imagine cinema without it”).

Christian Claver who shot My best friends (1989) he remembers with him “a man of great culture and great intelligence.”

The one who knew him the most was probably his longtime partner Agnes Jaoui. This weekend again, I was captivated in a daily interview the world How much Bakri meant from meeting them.

“This is the person who expressed what I felt without being formulated; who had reflections that amazed me, comforted me, and testified to the common values, the relationship between good and evil that I shared, with a conviction that stunned me, because it was so unique! She declared.

Jean-Pierre Bakri in five main roles

Family resemblance (1996)

A cinematic adaptation of Cedric Klabish for this play with the couple Bakri Jawi. He plays Henry, the older and unloved brother of the Maynard family who meets every Friday evening for dinner at his cafe, or Peer Tranqui.

He’s unhappy – we’ll know his wife Arlit just left him – and pretty quickly, the conversation is, as always, about the younger Philip, who is an undrinkable CEO and their mother’s favorite baby. Tensions run high in the family.

Bakry plays there, as he often does, a bitter and disappointed man, but he is very likable.

We know the song (1997)

Alan Renee’s film, still based on the script of the couple Bakri Jawi, borrows from Cinema Street, with lots of double meanings and kind words. Jean-Pierre Bakri is Nicholas, an old love for Odile (Sabine Azima) who ostensibly shows fantastic success. It upsets the apparently entrenched couple he poses with Claude (Pierre Arditi). Bakri won the Cesar Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.

The taste of others (2000)

Directed by Anias Javi, about a script he co-wrote, is Jean-Jacques Castilla, a director with a somewhat handsome mustache – sorry that the play Bernice Or “In poetry, a prostitute” – someone who falls in love with an actress, tries to integrate into her artistic environment. Without much success.

We make fun of this clinging bourgeois in a scene reminiscent of us Stupid dinner. But Clara becomes sensitive to this man’s love.

Second Cesar Nomination for Best Actor.

Wise woman (2016)

As comfortable in cinema as in theater, in his own works as in the classic record, he got the actor’s Molière in a theatrical presentation of this play by … Molière.

In a stage performance by Katherine Heigl at the San Martin Theater, he reinvents the cowardly Chrysale and brings him the radiance of humanity. Here, too, is the response to Anias Jawi, who was his longtime companion.

Meaning of the party (2017)

His latest films are directed by Toledano Niqash. It is Max, the experienced wedding planner, who should oversee a young couple’s wedding in a beautiful castle, with all the emergencies. He must act urgently so that the party does not turn into a disaster. A comedy that tells more behind the scenes than the wedding itself.

Jean-Pierre Bakri won his sixth Cesar nomination for Best Actor, a statuette that he would never have won for a lead role.