Comedian André Wilms, known for his collaborations with Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, of whom he was the favorite actor, died Wednesday at the age of 74.
The reason for his death, which occurred in a Parisian hospital, was not communicated by his family.
Actor of theater and cinema, director on the boards, André Wilms made himself known to the general public by playing Mr. Le Quesnoy in “Life is a long quiet river” (1988), by Étienne Chatiliez. His character is a senior executive who addresses his wife and is addressed by his five children. “If you drink cold right after the hot soup, it will blow the enamel off your teeth, Emmanuelle,” he explains, for example.
Then he was appreciated by moviegoers thanks to the tragicomic films of Aki Kaurismäki. Together they shot “La Vie de bohème” (1992), “The Leningrad Cowboys meet Moïse” (1994), “Juha” (1999), “Le Havre” (2011), presented at the Cannes Film Festival, “L’Autre Side of Hope” (2017). Films marked by poetic dialogues, with a certain tenderness for its characters.
In “Le Havre”, André Wilms was thus a shoe shiner, who extended his hand to a young African without papers. “The Other Side of Hope” orchestrated the meeting between a Syrian migrant stranded against his will in the Finnish grayness and a restaurant owner separated from his alcoholic wife.
I was always put in the roles of Nazis
André Wilms laughed when asked about the functioning of a set whose boss does not speak the language: “Great directors don’t need to talk! he was like, ‘Play like an old gentleman. Don’t run. Don’t spill anything’… Everyone runs in movies these days.”
“Aki is one of the rare directors who does not take the actors for illiterates, although there are many of them”, he said again.
André Wilms has always been wary of the vagaries of fame. Born in 1947 in Strasbourg, where he obtained a plasterer’s CAP, he left his hometown for Toulouse. Having become a machinist in a theatre, he was then tempted to step onto the stage. He achieves this as an extra.
“I was always put in the roles of Nazis, because I spoke good German,” he recalled. This mastery of the language of Goethe will serve him when he goes to Paris and lands a role in a “Faust” directed by Klaus Michael Grüber.
“The mouths evolve”
“It’s the time that imposes the actors (…) Belmondo, everyone found him ugly. Depardieu, it was said that he was a young agricultural leader. And so I believe that the mouths evolve with the times, ”he noted. “I would like to say that I am not responsible for my face. »
In his youth, he joined the Proletarian Left, a Maoist organization in the early 1970s. “We were desperately looking for this utopia (…) so we hoped for the Chinese Revolution (…) it collapsed. I have a few comrades, some have committed suicide, others have become mute. I really believed it. I even believed that theater could change,” he explained.
He is to appear one last time on the screen in Patrice Leconte’s “Maigret”, which will be released on February 23.