this “lost teenager” from a working-class neighborhood in Seine-Saint-Denis who became a huge actor

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From a popular district of Bagnolet (Seine-Saint-Denis) in the light of the seventh art. Died at the age of 75, as his wife announced this Sunday, December 1, 2024 to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the actor and comedian Niels Arestrupwinner of three Césars for “best actor in a supporting role”climbed the social ladder to enter the microcosm of French cinema.

Son of a worker father and a secretary mother

However, this upward trajectory could hardly have been anticipated at his birth in 1949. Born to a Danish fatherhaving emigrated during the World War IIand dreaming of the United States, and of a French mother, one of the favorite actors of Jacques Audiardfor which he obtained two Césars thanks to the films My heart stopped beating (2005) et A prophet (2009), grew up in the heart of the working-class suburb of Bagnolet in the 1950s.

“I experienced a sound childhoodfull of the sound of jails breaking,” he remembered in Monde in 2019, talking about his father's job, workshop manager. “I can still smell the grease from the workshops,” he told the newspaper. Only son, Niels Arestrup lived the solitudemoreover with a father who worked from “7 a.m. to 6 p.m.”, as he told Vanity Fair on the occasion of his 50th career.

For her part, her mother held a position as shorthand typist at a radio manufacturer. ” It was very simple people», he summed up Monde. The absence of brothers and sisters, combined with the principle of discretion imposed by his father, shaped “a form of shyness” and a relationship to “particular emotion”. “I was a lost teenager, like many others,” he admitted to Vanity Fair.

Theater in the 1960s

Despite these uncertainties about his future, he joined the stage in the 1960s thanks to the actress Tania Balachova. The start of a career spanning almost half a century. Very attached to the theater, he even took the reins of the Renaissance theater in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, between 1989 and 1993.

Often draped in dark roles, Niels Arestrup notably took on the costume of president of the Republicin the famous series mixing politics and thriller Black Baron (2016). This was one of his last major television appearances.

With AFP

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