The director of Le Petit Nicolas has left his mark in Seine-et-Marne

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He died after a long battle with his illness. Laurent Tirardthe director of the Little Nicholas or even the film The Speechdied of cancer on Thursday, September 5, 2024, his entourage announced. Revealed in 2004 with his comedy Lies and betrayals and more if there is a connection… which brought together in the cast Édouard Baer, ​​Alice Taglioni, Clovis Cornillac and Marie-Josée Croze, the 57-year-old director had a special link with Seine-et-Marne.

Success of a dunce

Born in Roubaix, Laurent Tirard lived in Héricy for a long time and studied in Fontainebleau. “Laurent was a childhood friend,” confided the deputy Frédéric Valletouxformer mayor of Fontainebleau. I met him in second year at the François-I high school^isbut he also attended the international college of Fontainebleau.

His film studies, however, would take him away from the territory: he would go to New York to study film and then go to Hollywood. He would be a script reader at Warner, then a journalist at Studio Magazinebefore becoming a screenwriter for television, then cinema. If his film studies will take him away from Fontainebleau, the director has always kept ties in the sector.

For example, he shot several scenes from his first feature film in the Fontainebleau forest, a film that would earn Clovis Cornillac the César for best supporting actor in 2005. “When he was younger, he already shot amateur films in the Fontainebleau forest and he would happily return there to talk about his career and cinema,” continues Frédéric Valletoux.

“It was during these years that I did the most stupid things.”

In 2019, Laurent Tirard returned to the François-I high school^is for a meeting with high school students, at the invitation of the association Un artiste à l’école. “The phrase that came up on all my school reports was ‘can do better,'” he confided. “We felt potential, but a lot of laziness.”

His biggest mistake? He confided it in our columns: “We had climbed a wall of the high school to enter through a window and fill out blank school reports that we had sent to the parents. It was during these years that I did the most stupid things.” The man who described himself as “a dunce” may have drawn on his past for his adaptation of Little Nicholasin 2009.

This comedy will remain his greatest success in theaters with more than 5 million admissions, taken from the best-selling novels by Goscinny and Sempé. Adaptations will also remain one of his trademarks: he will sign ASterix and Obelix: In the Service of Her Majesty in 2012, Little Nicolas’s Holidays in 2014, or again The Speechin 2020, based on the novel by Fabrice Caro.

A tribute in the works

At the Fontainebleau cinema, he also left an indelible mark. “He presented almost all of his films as previews in our cinemas,” recalls Judith Reynaudthe manager of the CinéParadis group. Consideration is also being given to a screening in her memory in the Bellifontaine cinemas.

Diagnosed with cancer in 2012, he underwent a bone marrow transplant that caused a complication: graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). A reaction that “attacked his skin, lungs, liver, intestines,” he confided in 2020. His funeral is scheduled for this Wednesday, September 11, 2024 at 10 a.m., at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris (6^e).

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