Belgian actor Roger van Hool, known for having played Oscar opposite Louis de Funès, but also for having worked with Roger Vadim and François Truffaut, died on Monday at the age of 82.
Roger van Hool, Belgian theater, television and film actor well known to fans of Louis de Funès for having played his driver Oscar in the famous film of the same name, died on Monday at the age of 82, from complications from a long illness.
Born in Antwerp in 1940, Roger van Hool studied in his native Belgium, in Nivelles, and learned the profession of actor with the theater company Nederlands Kamertoneel, before leaving for Paris.
While continuing to play on the boards, he then began a career in cinema and was offered, for his very first feature film, a face-to-face with Louis de Funès (in one of the latter’s best films according to viewers). Even if his role is very secondary, he thus embodies Oscar, the character who gives his name to the unforgettable film by Edouard Molinaro, ex-driver of the very irritable Bertrand Barnier (played by De Funès) whose daughter he hopes to marry.
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Following this first role, Roger van Hool continued his career as an actor in France and Belgium, between theater stages and film and television sets. In particular, he collaborated on several occasions with the Belgian filmmaker André Delvaux, for example in Rendez-vous à Bray.
On the French side, we can see him in front of Alain Cavalier’s camera and opposite Catherine Deneuve in La Chamade, with François Truffaut (in La Femme d’à Côté), with Roger Vadim (in the mini-series La Nouvelle Tribu), or on the poster of the memorable Tanguy by Etienne Chatiliez.
More recently, we have notably been able to see him in L’Odyssée by Jérôme Salle, in La Vérité by Hirokazu Kore-eda or in the comedy Adorables by Solange Cicurel.
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