The actor Jacques Sereys, honorary member of the Comédie-Française who played fifty roles on stage and also in many films, died at the age of 94, according to the Elysée.
Born June 2, 1928 in Saint-Maurice (Val-de-Marne), raised in Marseille by his mother, an embroiderer – he never knew his father – he started as an office boy at Crédit Lyonnais before landing in Paris in 1947, driven by his desire to become an actor.
“At 19, he read his classics, lost his accent and passed the Conservatory. From then on, he works, reads, learns”writes on his website the Comédie-Française which he joined in 1955.
“With a pronounced taste for intermittency”, notes the House of Molière since he left the venerable institution in 1965 to finally join it in 1978 and this until 1997. He played a varied repertoire (Marivaux, Genet, Corneille, Goldoni or even Feydeau) and brought Giraudoux into the Comedie Francaise. His comrades are Jacques Charon, Robert Hirsch, Jean Piat and Françoise Seigner.
“He was an esteemed figure in French theater and a familiar face in our popular cinema”underlined the presidency in a press release on Sunday evening, Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron welcoming “a man who had dedicated his life to the theater”.
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“Jacques Sereys served texts which, by their melancholy or their panache, their liveliness or their subtlety, said everything about a certain French spirit”notes for its part the Elysée.
In 2006, he won the Molière award for best actor for his one-man performance “On the side of Proust”, as well as the Brigadier of Honor award in 2015 for his entire career.
He made forays into the cinema, notably with his role as head of the secret services opposite Yves Montand in “I… like Icarus” by Henri Verneuil (1979) and roles in “le Feu follet” and “le Souffle au cœur” by Louis Malle. The second part of his cinematographic career was marked by many supporting roles in various films such as “Operation Corned-beef” by Jean-Marie Poiré, “Le Hussard sur le toi” by Jean-Paul Rappeneau or “Chouchou” with Gad Elmaleh.
He had married Philippine de Rothschild, also an actress at the French who played under the name of Philippine Pascale, and with whom he had two children, Philippe and Camille.
