Jean-Louis Trintinian, the French actor closely associated with the European new waves of the 1960s and 1970s, has died at the age of 91. His wife, Marian Hopfner Trintinian, told AFP.
Born in 1930, Trintinian’s childhood is overshadowed by World War II, but he grabs the passion for racing cars by two uncles – one of whom was killed on the track in 1933. Trintinian makes his name as an actor with a role in the transport Roger Vadim’s Brigitte Bardot remedy and God created a woman in 1956, but was then sent to Algeria as a recruiter during the War of Independence.
On his return to France, Trintinian focused his love of competition on the lead role of Claude Lelouch’s 1966 international hit, Man and Woman, playing a widower who fell in love with Anouc Emme. Known for his themed music (by Francis Lai), Man and Woman was a huge success for French cinema in the United States. Trintignant and Aimée will appear in two subsequent acts: Man and Woman: 20 Years Later (1986) and Best Years of Life (2019).
Trintinian in Man and Woman. Photo: Cinetext Bildarchiv / Allied Artists / Allstar
He will continue to work with a number of major directors of the era. With Claude Chabrol in the drama Highsmithian Les Biches (1968), starring Stefan Audran, whom Trintinian married in the mid-1950s. He played a magistrate investigating the murder of Oscar Z winner 1969 on Costa Gavras and participated in similar political articles with Bernardo Bertolucci’s anti-fascist drama The Conformist (1970). He also starred in Eric Romer’s debating romance My Night at Maud’s (1969).
Trintignant limited his activities almost exclusively to European cinema, but he played a spy in Under Fire in 1983, a political thriller directed by Roger Spotiswood during the Sandinista Rebellion in Nicaragua. He will also continue to star in the final films of two major European authors, playing a real estate agent suspected of murder in Francois Truffaut’s Finally Sunday! (1983) and retired judge in Krzysztof Keszlowski’s “Three Colors: Red” (1994), with Irene Jakob.
After making several films in the late 1990s and 2000s, Trintignant achieved great success with Michael Haneke Amour’s 2012 Palme d’Or, opposite Emmanuel Riva, as an elderly married couple trying to cope on their own. after the latter suffered a stroke. The film won a number of major awards, with Trintinian winning the Césars Best Actor award. Trintignant then appeared in Haneke’s next film, Happy End, in 2017.
Trintinian is survived by his wife Marian Höpfner, whom he married in 2000. He has two previous marriages: Odran between 1954 and 1956 and with director Nadine Marquand from 1960 to 1976. He had three children, including Marie Trintinian, who was killed in 2003 by her boyfriend Bertrand Cantat.
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