Actress Geneviève Fontanel is dead
Throughout her career, the actress has multiplied roles, both in classic plays as in boulevard comedies.
Le Monde
3/18/2018
The actress Geneviève Fontanel, actress of theater who was the interpreter of great authors like Cocteay, Pirandello or Ionesco, died Saturday March 17 at the age of 81 years, learned AFP with her famly.
The actress, also a filmmaker won the César for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in François Truffaut's Man Who Loves Women (1977). She is also known for her roles in Henri Verneuil's A Monkey in Winter, Moshe Mizrahi's La vie devant soi and Bertrand Blier's Our Story.
In 1999, she was rewarded by Molière for best actress in a supporting role for Edward Albee's play Délicate Balance.
Throughout her career, the actress has multiplied the roles, both in classic plays ( Les Précieuses ridicules, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme), and in boulevard comedies, where she played alongside Jean Le Poulain, Roger Pierre and Jean -Marc Thibault.
A last role in 2015
She has also played Ionesco - Macbett, This wonderful mess! - as Pirandello - Tonight we improvise - or Cocteau - Parents terrible in a staging of Jean-Claude Brialy. "When I'm not playing, I'm hell," the actress admitted. In parallel, she has not stopped shooting for television.
The actress was born in Bordeaux but grew up in Casablanca. At 17, she returned to Bordeaux where she studied at the municipal conservatory, before joining the Drama Center on rue Blanche in Paris and the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. In 1958, she joined the Comédie-Française, which she will be a resident for four years, and she will keep a critical memory:
"I do not keep a bad memory, since it allowed me to play a number of pieces of the repertoire, to start in the cinema, to tour (...) But after a while, we have a impression of captivity at the Comédie-Française »
In 1965, she married the comedian and painter Jacques Destoop, with whom she had a daughter, Isabelle.
Her last role was in The Big Girls in 2015, where she played, with Judith Magre, Claire Nadeau and Edith Scob, a quartet of old unworthy ladies.
FONTANEL, Geneviève (Geneviève Paule Clairette Fontanel)
Born: 6/27/1936, Bordeaux, France
Died: 3/17/2018, France
Geneviève, Fontanel’s western – actress:
Fortune (TV) – 1969 (Jenny Carruthers)