Death of Niels Arestrup, César for best actor in a supporting role three times

French actor Niels Arestrup died on Sunday at the age of 75 at his home in Ville-d'Avray (Hauts-de-Seine), his press secretary and his wife announced to AFP. “I am extremely sad to announce the death of my husband, the immense actor Niels Arestrup, at the end of a courageous fight against illness. He passed away surrounded by the love of his family”wrote in a press release his wife, Isabelle Le Nouvel, mother of his two twins born in 2012.

Between 2006 and 2014, Niels Arestrup won the César for best supporting actor three times. He was rewarded twice for his roles in Jacques Audiard's films “The Beat My Heart Stopped” and “A Prophet”. Niels Arestrup obtained the same award for “Quai d'Orsay”, adaptation of a comic strip on French diplomacy. He was also a great man of the theater and won the Molière for best actor in a private show for “Rouge”.

In 2016, the actor also played one of the main roles in the political fiction series “Black Baron”, where he only agreed to play in the first season. “I refuse to play a recurring character, to embark on a role for two or three years that ends up sticking to you”he explained to Le Monde in 2019.

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True to the scene

Niels Arestrup developed a passion for theater by taking lessons with French actress Tania Balachova. He remained faithful to the stage for almost half a century and largely rejected celebrity. “When I started in the profession, theater directors chose a play, then they asked themselves the question of distribution. Now, it's the opposite: we look for a star and, only after that, the play that could go with”he lamented in Le Monde in 2019. From 1989 to 1993, he himself took charge of a theater, that of the Renaissance in Paris.

Her career was also marred by accusations of violence against actresses during filming or rehearsals, among others by Isabelle Adjani and Myriam Boyer. “It sticks to my skin”he admitted, interviewed by Libération in 2007. He was never the subject of a complaint.

Niels Arestrup owed his name to a Danish father who attempted to emigrate to the United States but stopped in France to get married. He grew up in a very modest environment in the Paris region. “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 to Le Figaro in 2021.