| Maurice Ronet | |
|---|---|
| Born | Maurice Julien Marie Robinet April 13, 1927 Nice, France |
| Died | March 14, 1983 Paris, France |
| Years active | 1949–1983 |
Maurice Ronet (13 April 1927 – 14 March 1983) was a French film actor, director and writer.
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Maurice Ronet was born Maurice Julien Marie Robinet in Nice, Alpes Maritimes, the only child of professional stage actors Émile Robinet and Gilberte Dubreuil. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire. He made his stage debut in Jean Cocteau's Les Parents terribles, in 1943. By the time he made his film debut at the age of twenty-two in Jacques Becker's Rendez-vous de juillet (1949), in a role that was written specifically for him by Becker, he had little interest in pursuing an acting career. In 1950, after a year mandatory military service in Morocco, he married Maria Pacôme, a French theatre actress, and they departed to Moustiers-Sainte-Marie in Provence. He tried his hand at ceramics, painting, writing and music (piano, organ). Throughout the early 1950s he made a living by selling some of his paintings. (He was encouraged by Georges Mathieu and his work was once exhibited along with Jean Dubuffet). He also acted very occasionally in small roles in the films of established French directors like Yves Allégret, René Wheeler and Yves Ciampi, with ambitions of possibly becoming a filmmaker himself. Gradually, however, he came to discover a freedom in acting and a creative satisfaction that provided a synthesis of all that interested him in painting, literature and music.
He first garnered acclaim at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival for his work in Jean Dreville's Horizons sans fin and over the next few years, notably as the romantic lead in André Michel's La Sorcière, 1956 and in Jules Dassin's Celui qui doit mourir (He Who Must Die, 1957). It was at the presentation of "La Sorcière", at Cannes, where he met a creative and an intellectual counterpart in Louis Malle. Two years later he made his international box-office breakthrough as Julien Tavernier in Malle's first feature film, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (Elevator to the Gallows, 1958). He went on to act in close to one hundred French and Spanish, Italian, British & American co-productions of the 50s, 60s, and 70's, in leading and in smaller character/comedic roles.
He is probably most known for originating the role of Dickie/Phillipe Greenleaf in the French adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Plein soleil, Rene Clement, 1960). The role with which he is most closely identified is that of a suicidally depressed writer, in his finest collaboration with Louis Malle: Le Feu follet ("The Fire Within", 1963), for which he was awarded France's Étoile de Cristal (Crystal Star) and the prize for Best Actor at the 1965 São Paulo Film Festival; the film also won a Special Jury Prize at the 1963 Venice Film Festival.
He was also a collaborator of Claude Chabrol. He appeared in four of his films including Le Scandale (1966), for which he won the Best Actor award at the 1967 San Sebastián International Film Festival & La Femme infidèle ("The Unfaithful Wife", 1968). In 1969 and he co-starred with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in La Piscine (Jacques Deray, 1969).
Other highlights include: La Dénonciation (by the co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, 1962); The Victors (Carl Foreman, 1963); Trois chambres à Manhattan, (Marcel Carné, 1965); Lost Command (Mark Robson, 1966); How Sweet It Is! (Jerry Paris, 1968) starring Debbie Reynolds; Raphaël ou le débauché, (Michel Deville, 1971); Beau-père (Bertrand Blier,1981). He was also originally cast to play Ali in Lawrence of Arabia, but he was replaced on location by Omar Sharif because of difficulties with his accent.
He made his own directorial debut in 1964 with Le Voleur de Tibidabo, a picaresque crime story shot in Barcelona and in which he also starred.) He followed it up later with two documentaries: Vers l'île des Dragons (1973), an allegorical journey to Indonesia to film the Komodo dragon and a report on the building of a damn in Caborabassa, Mozambique, for French television. He wrote and directed more programs for television: his own acclaimed adaptation of Herman Melville's Bartleby in 1976 (which was released theatrically in 1978), as well as adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe and Cornell Woolrich stories. He also authored two books: "L'ile des Dragons" (1973), a personal recollection and a chronicle of the making of Vers l'île des Dragons, and "Le Métier de Comédien" (1977), an honest and thorough discussion of the acting profession.
His marriage to Maria Pacôme ended in a separation and they divorced in 1956. He was in a relationship with Anouk Aimée from 1958 to 1960. He constructed his own home in the village of Bonnieux in Provence and he shared it with Josephine Chaplin, by whom he had a son, Julien (b.1980), from 1977 until his death, of cancer, in Paris, a month before what would have been his 56th birthday. He is buried at the cemetery near his home.
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