While we learn this Sunday the death of Niels Arestrup at 75he will remain a character apart in the world of cinema and theater, he the son of a Danish immigrant who rejected fame. Niels Arestrup, born in 1949, grew up in the Paris region. His Danish father was on his way to emigrate to the United States. He finally stopped in France and got married. He grew up in a very modest environment in the east of Paris. “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 said at Figaro in 2021.
His career began in the early 1970s, alternating between theater and cinema. He will have toured with the greatest, Alain Resnais, Claude Lelouch, Yves Boisset… But it is Jacques Audiard who will offer him the most striking roles, in My heart stopped beating in 2005 and A prophet in 2009, which each time earned him a César for best supporting role. In 2014, he also won a third César for best supporting role for Quai d'Orsay, adaptation of a comic book on French diplomacy, as well as a Molière in 2020.
To beat my heart has stopped, film by Jacques Audiard, which will give him his first César
He had started theater just before May 68
He had been awakened to the stage by the actress Tania Balachova. He entered his theater class at Gaîté-Montparnasse in 1968. He never left it again, at first as a simple witness. “I attended one of her classes, then two, then three, until she came to find me, at the back of the room, did he have explained to Le Monde in 2019. She told me very clearly that I couldn't stay if I didn't take the risk of going on stage, like the others. She was an excellent teacher, very demanding and very honest with her students. She decided to keep me and encouraged me. It's very important, the first person who encourages you. I felt enveloped by his attention, protected”.
Black Baron, series in which he plays the President of the Republic
In Black Baronin 2016, he played the role of Francis Laugier, the President of the Republic, a political fiction series acclaimed around the world.
Baron Noir – CANAL+ Trailer [HD]
“A great actor, a great performer” for Jean-Michel Ribes
“When I started in the profession, theater directors chose a play, then they asked themselves the question of distribution, he lamented in Le Monde in 2019. Now it's the opposite: we look for a star and, only then, the piece that could go with it.”
He has participated in more than sixty films since the 1970s, around fifty series and films for television and around forty plays. “He was a great actor, he was a great performer, whether in front of the camera or in front of the audiencegreeted actor and director Jean-Michel Ribes on franceinfo. He didn't overact in the theater and he wasn't in minimal acting in the cinema. He believes that “his image has often been distorted”. Niels Arestrup was often seen as “a character actor” more “he was a sensitive and very kind man”he assures.
