In 1973, Jacques Villeret met actress Irina Tarassov and married her on December 26, 1979. 20 years later in 1998, the couple divorced. Interviewed by the magazine Gala, she recounted with emotion her daily life punctuated by the alcoholism of her husband who had even come to commit the irreparable: wanting to set fire to their marital bed. While she had so far forgiven several tantrums from her husband, Irina decided this time to leave and flee to a hotel. In love, she still gave him an ultimatum: in the future, it will be alcohol or her. Finally, Jacques Villeret lets himself be carried away by his demons and decides to divorce his wife.
“Alcohol is an instrument for him. After a number of drinks, he finds the anger that has encumbered him since childhood, taking himself for the master of the world, threatening, aggressive and sometimes dangerous.“confided Irina in 2005, adding that life with her husband had become a”hell“. In his book One day everything will be fine released in 2006, it also portrayed a depressed man accustomed to blackmailing suicides. “He was never wrong, never apologized“, confided Irina.
According to her, the ill-being of the actor came from his adolescence when he had learned violently from a school principal that his father was not his real father. At that time, he discovered that his real name was Mohammed Boufroura and that he was the son of a Kabyle. Moreover, his depression would have worsened when he learned that he could not become a father (by the way, he adopted Irina Tarasov’s son, Alexander).
Finally, if everything smiled on the actor of cabbage souphe would have been extremely hurt when he learned that Yves Montand and Simone Signoret had opposed his presence in the film Manon of the sources while the director Claude Berri intended to take him for the role of Ugolin Soubeyran known as “Galinette”. It was ultimately Daniel Auteuil who was chosen.
In 2002, Jacques Villeret met the last companion of his life, Seny, a young mother of Senegalese origin. They will live together until the death of the actor, carried away by the disease in 2005.