Broken family, inheritance… Laurent de Funès confides in his illustrious grandfather, Louis de Funès

“How was it with your grandfather and grandmother?” Interviewed two days ago by Jordan de Luxe on C8, Laurent de Funès, the grandson of Louis de Funès, currently on stage via a one-man show, “Deux Funès”, which tours in the north and east of France, tells a thousand anecdotes about his grandfather, who died when he was twenty.

Stories of a broken family, after the remarriage of Louis de Funès.

Laurent de Funès, 62 years old, is the son of Daniel, the eldest son of Louis de Funès, the fruit of a first marriage. Now deceased, “him too after having had a very serious heart attack, almost to the day at the same age as his father”Daniel, died ten years later, “was the hidden son, the hated son. He didn't let this suffering show much. When my grandfather left, he collapsed”, says Laurent de Funès, who recounts the horrors of a broken family.

“Jeanne, my grandfather's second wife, wanted to erase us. She wanted to completely push us aside, she succeeded. She distended the whole family. She was a very authoritarian woman, she ruled over everything. My grandfather came to see us in secret”, remembers Laurent de Funès. Then not at all: “My father ended up falling out with my father, it ate him away. And I didn't see him for a while. We weren't invited to the funeral, and we were left out of inheritance.”

With great emotion, Laurent de Funès tells another side of the actor's personality, who was fleeing notoriety. “He absolutely didn't want to talk about cinema. We talked about wine, he loved Chablis, Château Grenouille, we talked about jazz..”

“My father had very good relations with Patrick and Olivier”born from the second marriage of Louis de Funès, then “there was a bad money story, rights buyouts, it always happens like that.”

“I have no bitterness”

“I have no bitterness”, testifies Laurent de Funès, cousin of the philosopher Julia de Funès, also granddaughter of Louis de Funès.

“I don’t know her. I contacted her.” There was no sequel: “You never know and I think we will never see each other”.

The show “Deux Funès” is a “imaginary conversation with my grandfather”, explains the grandson: “When I play, I always feel like he’s on top, I feel like he’s there.”

His friendship with Michel Galabru (“I loved Michel, we were very friends, I had lunch with him every Friday”), his proposals for the cinema (“I was asked to become a police officer, I said no”), their favorite films (“La grande vadrouille”) and those they don't like (“The Gendarme in New York”), Claude Gensac, his “fake grandmother” and Marthe Mercadier, with whom he put on a show. Laurent de Funès evokes many memories.

On January 27, 1983, the day of the death of Louis de Funès, Laurent de Funès was leaving a nightclub when he discovered, in a newsstand, the press headlines announcing the death of Louis de Funès.

“It was his job that he killed, he was very anxious”confides Laurent de Funès.