A striking and remarkable second role in French cinema, actor Philippe Laudenbach has died at the age of 88.
Philippe Laudenbach died Monday at the age of 88, his family and his agent announced. Nephew of actor Pierre Fresnais, he was a well-known face of French cinema, having appeared in nearly 200 films from the early 1960s to the present day.
Like Philippe Laudenbach, they left us in 2024
Beginnings at Resnais
After training at the National Higher Conservatory of Dramatic Art, Philippe Laudenbach shot his first feature film in 1963, Muriel ou le temps d’un retour, under the direction of Alain Resnais. He will meet the director again in 1980 in his study on human behavior, Mon Oncle d’Amérique, before experiencing happiness in a castle by playing a curious character, the educator who is the enemy of gratuitous daydreaming, in Life is a Novel .
With nearly a hundred films and television films to his credit, the actor has never stopped filming and counts among his partners actors as famous as Gérard Depardieu in Rive gauche, rive gauche or even Jean-Hugues Anglade in 37°2 in the morning. Accustomed to Resnais’ filming, he meets Lambert Wilson in Les Caprices d’un rivière where he meets Pierre Arditi, another recurring actor of the filmmaker.
Face of the New Wave
Although he never obtained a leading role, the actor nevertheless played for the great figures of the New Wave. He defends Jean-Louis Trintignant in Vivement Dimanche! by François Truffaut, then plays in one of Eric Rohmer’s tales, “The waiter” in 4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle.
Gaumont Distribution Philippe Laudenbach
His name appears in the credits of a wide range of films, such as the adventures of the gentleman burglar Arsène Lupin or those of the famous private detective Sherlock Holmes. He rubs shoulders with the glittery universe of People Jet Set 2 then that, darker but not devoid of humor, of funeral directors in the comedy Bouquet final with Didier Bourdon.
He makes the public laugh in Black mic-mac and in L’Année Juliette, where a story of suitcases exchanged at the airport saves Fabrice Luchini from the advances of Valérie Stroh. He also tried his hand at the detective genre several times with director Nicolas Boukhrief, in Le Convoyeur in 2004 then in Cortex in 2008.
Comfortable in all genres
In a more intimate register, the actor is part of the adventure Of Men and Gods, the film by Xavier Beauvois which won an award at Cannes in 2010, and takes part in War Is Declared by Valérie Donzelli. In Les Emotifs Anonymes, he films with Isabelle Carré, Benoît Poelvoorde and Pierre Niney, whom he meets again in 2012 in Comme des Frères. In this drama, he accompanies the young actor as well as François-Xavier Demaison and Nicolas Duvauchelle in the mourning of their friend, wife or sister, played by Mélanie Thierry.
We then find him in the credits of comedies like Barbecue, The Law of the Jungle, Marie-Francine and even Ibiza. Comfortable in all genres, he had participated in News from the planet Mars, L’ami – François d’Assise and his brothers and Marguerite and Julien or Gaz de France.
His last role in the cinema remains that of Marshal Pétain in De Gaulle, alongside Lambert Wilson, released in 2020.