Death of Nils Arestrup at 75, Actor of 3 Cesars and Unforgettable by Jacques Audiard

“I am deeply saddened to announce the death of my husband, a great actor Nils ArestrupAt the end of her courageous battle against illness, she was surrounded by the love of her family.” These are the words that Isabelle Le Nouvel, also the press secretary of this charismatic actor, announced in a press release about his death, which took place this Sunday, December 1, at the age of 75, at his home in Ville d’Avre, Hautes. de-sen.

Supporting roles of scoundrels and ambiguous characters

From a modest family of Danish origin, Nils Arestrup grew up in the suburbs of Paris and after graduating from school enrolled in Tanya Balachova’s course. He began his career in theater before making his film debut in Sammy Powell’s Miss O’Gin and the Flower Men in 1973, followed by Alain Rennes’ Stavisky in 1974.

Without abandoning the theater, he created an atypical career consisting of minor villain roles (Les Loups entre them, 1985; La Rumba, 1986) and ambiguous characters (La Dérobade or La Femme cop with Miou-Miou). Since the mid-1980s, we’ve seen him headline several feature films, such as Marco Ferrer’s The Future Is a Woman (1984), in which he becomes the lover of a trio; The Temptation of Venus (1991), playing a Hungarian conductor struggling with the Paris Opera; Lulu Kreutz’s Picnic (1999), in which she plays a famous and unfortunate cellist; Or Parle-moi d’amour (2002), Sophie Marceau’s first play, in which she plays an elderly husband who divorces his wife.

Despite his immense talent, in the theater he argued with Isabelle Adjani and Jean-Paul Roussillon. Miss Julie by August Strinberg in 1983, as well as with Miriam Boyer Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In 1996, they are infamous.

Two very strong roles in Jacques Audiard

In 2005 and 2009, Nils Arestrup found two of his strongest roles filming for Jacques Audiard, two performances for which he won the César for Best Actor (Supporting Actor) in 2006 and 2010: we see him playing the father, the unscrupulous. A real estate agent, by Romain Duris in To Beat, My Heart Stopped and the terrifying godfather of the Corsican underworld in The Prophet, the main prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and also in 2010, he was awarded 9 Césars. Meanwhile, he tried his hand at directing for the first time in the Ivan Attal-directed political drama Le Candidat (2006), joining the rich casting of Giuliani. Schnabel’s film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, where he rubs shoulders with, among others, Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seiner, Patrick Chesney, Marina Hand and even Max Von. Sidov.

He then appeared in The Farewell Affair (2009), a spy thriller with Guillaume Canes and Emir Kusturica, and The Man Who Wanted to Live His Life (2010), an existential drama in which he starred Romain Duris. His performance earned him another nomination at the César for Best Supporting Actor. In 2011, we found him headlining alongside Gerard Depardieu in I’ve Forgotten Nothing, followed by Tu seras mon fils, where he plays a charismatic vintner. At the same time, he joined the cast of Steven Spielberg’s international mural, War Horse.

In 2012, three years after The Prophet, Nils Arestrup found Tahar Rahim’s To Lose Your Reason, a free adaptation of the Genevieve Lhermitt case, about a mother who killed her five children in 2007. Presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2012, St. In the category “In a certain way”, the film won the prize for the best actress thanks to the amazing performance of Emily Deken. Once again in the skin of a dirty and manipulative creature, the actor gives an intense performance that only he has the secret to.

César for Best Supporting Actor for Quai d’Orsay

2014 was a particularly busy year for Niels Arestrup: he won his first César for Best Supporting Actor for Bertrand Tavernier’s Quai d’Orsay, in which he portrayed Claude Maupass, the minister’s chief of staff. The actress then stayed in the political realm with Diplomatie, where she had a tense face-off with Andre Dusolier. The interpretation of the two men in this historical duel is unanimously appreciated. Finally, after playing a major criminal who escaped from prison and kidnapped Gerard Lanvin in 96 hours, he plays in La Dune, an inspector specializing in disappearances who tries to determine the identity of an undocumented migrant who remains mysteriously mute.

In 2015’s Papa Lumière, Niels Arestrup slips into the shoes of a gruff and distant father trying to get to know his daughter when both are rushed from Abidjan to a reception center in Nice. Alongside his film performances, Niels Arestrup is opposite Kad Merad in the first season of the successful political series The Black Baron (2016). With supporting roles in the films Vue sur mer (Angelina Jolie) and Goodbye there (Albert Dupont), the actor is usually less frequent on the screen. However, at the beginning of 2021, he was in the lead in Villa Caprice, where he played a seasoned lawyer who has a strange relationship with his client, one of the most powerful bosses in France (Patrick Bruel). His last appearance will be in the detective series Les Papillons Noirs with Nicolas Duvauchel and Divertimento, a moving story of the conductor, released in 2022 and 2023 respectively.