Mowed down by illness. On September 5, Laurent Tirard’s agent announced his death to AFP. “He left us at the age of 57, after having fought a long battle with illness with immense courage.”he had said. The filmmaker had become known to the general public with Little Nicolas (2009) et Asterix & Obelix: In Her Majesty’s Service (2012). His funeral took place this Wednesday, September 11 at the church of Saint-Germain-des-Près, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. A few personalities from the seventh art and the media world came to pay their last respects, such as Édouard Baer, Arié Elmaleh, François Morel, Benjamin Lavernhe, Kyan Khojandi or Guy Lagache, brother-in-law of the deceased.
Édouard Baer had met Laurent Tirard on the set of Lies and betrayals and more if there is a connectionin 2003. They had collaborated again on Molière et Asterix and Obelixthe actor playing the character of Asterix. Arié Elmaleh’s friendship with the director was born in 2007, on the film Molièrewith Romain Duris and Fabrice Luchini. For their part, the actors François Morel, Benjamin Lavernhe and Kyan Khojandi had become closer to Laurent Tirard in 2020, on the set of the comedy Speech.
>> PHOTOS – François Moral, Benjamin Lavernhe, Arié Elmaleh…: these personalities present at the funeral of director Laurent Tirard
Laurent Tirard had been suffering from lymphoma since 2012
Laurent Tirard’s wife, Olivia Lagache, was naturally present at the ceremony in his honor on September 11. Her brother, journalist and host Guy Lagache, came to support her in Saint-Germain-des-Près. The parents of the late director, Anne-Marie Lamotte and Marc Tirard, also came to Paris with their respective spouses to say goodbye to their son. On social media, Jean Dujardin, Gilles Lellouche, Paul Belmondo, Elsa Zylberstein, Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, as well as Frédérique Bel and Émilie Dequenne expressed their sorrow at the news of the filmmaker’s death.
In 2020, Laurent Tirard told the HTC Project, an endowment fund to combat complications from bone marrow transplants, that he had been diagnosed with a malignant tumor of the lymphatic system in 2012. “Until that phone call from Saint-Louis Hospital on December 31, 2012, telling me the results of a biopsy I had just had, I don’t think I had ever heard the word Lymphoma,” he had recounted. At the age of 45, he had undergone two chemotherapy sessions, without success, before receiving a bone marrow transplant thanks to his sister Virginie.But things got complicated.”he had regretted in his interview. Graft-versus-host disease had then unfortunately developed, attacking his skin, lungs, liver and intestines. He leaves behind three children, Virgile, Lili, Luce, and his daughter-in-law Elaia.
Photo credits: Agency / Bestimage
