Jacques Perrin, French actor, director and producer, passed away today at the age of 80 in Paris. The family members cited by the France Presse agency announced this.
"The family has the immense sadness to inform you of the disappearance of the filmmaker Jacques Perrin, today April 21 in Paris. He died in peace at the age of 80," said son Mathieu Simonet.
From the 1950s to the present day, Perrin has starred in over 70 films, including such hits as "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort" in 1967 and "Peau d'âne" in 1970.
His ties with Italy are also deep: he was the young Lorenzo Fainardi who was madly in love with Claudia Cardinale in Valerio Zurlini's “Girl with a suitcase” (1961). In 1966 he won two awards as best actor at the Venice Film Festival for the Italian film "Un uomo a mezzo" and for the Spanish film "La busca". In 1988 he was Salvatore as an adult in Giuseppe Tornatore's "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso", awarded the Oscar for best foreign film in 1990: the touching final sequence is famous, with kisses censored over the years but "saved" by the old projectionist on the notes by Ennio Morricone. It was also the friar Ugo Bassi in "In the name of the sovereign people" (1990) by Luigi Magni.
He has also co-produced about fifteen films from the 1960s to today, including Costa-Gavras' 'Z' (1968), Valerio Zurlini's' The Desert of the Tartars' (1977), in which he played Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo , or '' Les Choristes '' (2004) by his nephew Christophe Barratier. Particularly linked to the fight in defense of nature, he co-produced numerous documentaries on this theme, including "Le Peuple singe" (1989), "Microcosmos: the people of the grass" (1996) or "Himalaya: the childhood of a boss "(1999). Later, he made documentaries himself, "Océans" (1999) and "Il popolo migratore" (2001), César Prize for best documentary in 2011. His last film role was in "Goliath" , Frédéric Tellier thriller released in France last March that tackles the issue of lobbying and pesticides.
(Unioneonline / D)