A figure in theater and cinema, notably in the films of Jacques Audiard, French actor Niels Arestrup, awarded several Césars and a Molière, died on Sunday at the age of 75 at his home in the Paris region.
“I am extremely sad to announce the death of my husband, the immense actor Niels Arestrup, after a courageous fight against illness. He passed away surrounded by the love of his family,” his wife, Isabelle Le Nouvel, wrote in a press release.
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Gladly staying away from a celebrity he acquired late in life, Niels Arestrup obtained his first two César Awards for best supporting role for performances in front of the camera of director Jacques Audiard, for “The Beat My Heart Stopped » (2005) and “A Prophet” (2009).
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“We were dazzled by the strength of his performance and his magnetic presence in front of the camera of Jacques Audiard, Bertrand Tavernier, Julian Schnabel and Albert Dupontel. He will remain as one of our greatest actors,” wrote the French Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, on the social network X.
The actor owes his name to a Danish father who attempted to emigrate to the United States but stopped in France to get married. This father only spoke French to him, in a very modest environment in the Paris region.
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“You can imagine that as the son of a worker in Bagnolet in the 1950s, the show, the theater, the cinema, it was something that did not enter into my thoughts at all,” he told the daily Le Figaro in 2021.
He had taken over the management of a theater
But he became passionate about theater by taking lessons with the actress Tania Balachova. He remained faithful to the stage for nearly half a century, and largely rejected celebrity.
From 1989 to 1993, he himself took charge of a theater, that of the Renaissance in Paris. Among all his roles, rather dark and disturbing characters, the last one was in the cinema that of a conductor in “Divertimento” in 2023. A third and final César for best supporting role was awarded to him in 2014 for his incarnation of a chief of staff in “Quai d’Orsay”. He thanked Bertrand Tavernier for this “role a little different from what we usually offered (him), almost something funny”.
He played with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in the film “Sea View”, directed by the American actress and released in 2015, as well as in “War Horse” by Steven Spielberg. His career, also marked by winning a Molière for best actor in 2020, was marred by accusations of violence against actresses during filming or rehearsals, among others by Isabelle Adjani. “It sticks to me,” he admitted, interviewed by the newspaper Libération in 2007. He was never the subject of a complaint.
