from Jean-Claude Dusse to Monsieur Hire, the daring career of a popular actor

For the French public, he was first Jean-Claude Dusse, the scrawny, white as an aspirin tablet of the “Bronzés” who, deprived of his swimming trunks, comes out of the water with a handful of seaweed in as a cover-up. Directed by Patrice Leconte in 1978, the film was a great success in theaters, with 2.2 million admissions. Michel Blanc played this hypochondriac painkiller character a second time in “Les Bronzés sont du ski”. Who doesn’t remember the cult scene where, stuck at the top of a chairlift, he sings at the top of his lungs: “When will I see you again, wonderful country…”?

Born on April 16, 1952 in Courbevoie, in the Paris region, it was at the Pasteur high school in Neuilly-sur-Seine that Michel Blanc met Marie-Anne Chazel, Thierry Lhermitte, Gérard Jugnot and Christian Clavier. Together, they will form the famous Splendid troupe, irreverent and schoolboy as can be. If Michel Blanc excelled in comic characters from the start of his career, the actor very early sought to emancipate himself in roles offered by directors Bertrand Tavernier, Roman Polanski and Claude Miller.

It was the filmmaker Bertrand Blier who offered him, in 1986, the opportunity to make a daring career choice by offering him the role of Antoine in Evening wear. Michel Blanc plays, alongside Gérard Depardieu, a man cross-dressing out of love for another. Patrice Leconte, who had offered him his first comedic role, was also able to recognize in him his potential as a dramatic actor by entrusting him with the main role of Mr Hire (1989). Until 2007 and his role in “The Witnesses” by André Téchiné – a feature film on the arrival of AIDS – Michel Blanc turned to a theatrical career. However, the world of cinema has not forgotten him: he will be distinguished in 2012 by the César for best actor in a supporting role for State Exerciseby Pierre Schoeller. In this political thriller, the actor subtly plays the chief of staff of a minister responsible for carrying out a reform in which he does not believe. Chameleon actor and man full of self-deprecation, Michel Blanc knew, throughout his career, how to surprise and impose himself where he was least expected.