French screen legend Jean-Louis Trintignant dies

Paris, Jun 17 (EFE).- Film and stage actor Jean-Louis Trintignant, star of “A Man and a Woman” and “Amour,” died Friday, his family told French media. He was 91.

The actor, who disclosed four years ago that he had prostate cancer, passed away “peacefully” and surrounded by loved ones at his home in southern France, wife Marianne Hoepfner Trintignant said.

Trintignant appeared in more than 120 films across a career that spanned more than six decades, making his debut in 1956 under the direction of Roger Vadim in “And God Created Woman,” starring Brigitte Bardot.

His next film, following several years fighting for France as a conscript in the Algerian War, was also with Vadim, “Dangerous Liaisons (1959).

International stardom accompanied his role opposite Anouk Aimee in Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman” (1966), which took the Oscar for best foreign-language film.

In 1969, Trintignant received the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his portrayal of a magistrate investigating a political assassination in the Costa-Gavras thriller “Z.”

He went on to deliver acclaimed performances in “My Night at Maud’s” (1969) and in Bertolucci’s “The Conformist,” set in fascist Italy during the years leading up to World War II.

Trintignant pared back his work schedule after acquiring a vineyard in the 1990s, yet he remained a force with roles in important films such as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Oscar-nominated “Three Colors: Red (1994).”

He was 82 when he won the Cesar Award – France’s Oscars – for best actor on the strength of his work in Michael Haneke’s “Amour.”

And after announcing his retirement from acting in 2017, Trintignant agreed to join Aimee and Lelouch to make a sequel to “A Man and a Woman,” and the trio were together at Cannes in 2019 for the premier of “The Best Years of a Life.”

The actor, whose uncle, Maurice Trintignant, was a two-time winner of the Formula One Monaco Grand Prix, became a racer himself and had a brush with death in the 1980 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Jean-Louis Trintignant had three children, all with second wife Nadine Marquand.

Their second daughter, Pauline, succumbed to crib death at the age of 9 months in 1970, while Marie Trintignant, a successful actress in her own right, died in 2003 at 41 after a beating inflicted by her then-boyfriend, rock singer Bertrand Cantat. EFE mdv/dr