Film bruno cremer biography
Bruno Cremer
French actor
Bruno Jean Marie Cremer (6 October 1929 – 7 August 2010) was a French actor best known for portraying Jules Maigret on French television, from 1991 to 2005.
Origins
Bruno Cremer was born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. His mother, Jeanne Rullaert, a musician, was of Belgian Flemish origin and his father, Georges, was a businessman from Lille who, though born French, had taken out Belgian nationality after the French armed forces refused to accept him for service in the Second World War. Bruno himself opted for French nationality when he reached the age of 18. His childhood was largely spent in Paris.
Bruno attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school. Having completed his secondary studies, he followed an interest in acting which had interested him since the age of 12 and trained in acting from 1952 at France's highly selective Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique (English: French National Academy of Dramatic Arts).
Career
His career began with ten years spent acting in live theatre, playing roles drawn from works of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Jean Anouilh. Aged already 30, he created the role of Thomas Becket in the 1959 world premiere of Anouilh's Becket, and held Anouilh in veneration all his life. Later Cremer played Max in a French production of Bent by Martin Sherman in 1981. He regarded his basic profession as that of a stage actor, though he gravitated firmly to films.
It was in 1957 that Cremer had his first credited part in a film, Quand la femme s'en mêle (When a woman meddles), which starred Alain Delon. However, it was in 1965 that Cremer's career really began to prosper, with the film La 317e section, (The 317th Platoon), directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer and set in Indochina during the French colonial wars. From then onwards, Cremer became a popular actor and appeared in over 110 productions for cinema and television.
Bruno Cremer: Actor who excelled in military, gangster and detective roles
The French actor Bruno Crémer had what people across the Channel call une gueule – a memorable, rough-hewn, angular face – and he excelled in a succession of military, gangster and detective roles.
Most famously, he played Maigret on French television for 15 years, and managed a different take on the Parisian police inspector created by Georges Simenon.
"I tried to erase the old-fashioned, pipe-and-slippers, paternalistic aspect of the character," he said. "I thought he lacked a sense of humour so I brought a bit of mystery, a certain distance and irony to the part. My only regret is failing to convince the producers to have him forego the pipe for a cigar." The chain-smoking actor portrayed Maigret for 54 episodes between 1991 and 2005. However, while French television still buys and screens dubbed versions of whodunnit series like Midsomer Murders, UK-based channels gave up on Maigret after making their own versions starring Rupert Davies in the 1960s and Michael Gambon in the early '90s.
English-speaking audiences are therefore more likely to remember Crémer for his appearance alongside Roy Scheider in Sorcerer, William Friedkin's ill-fated 1977 remake of Henri-Georges Clouzot's gripping action drama The Wages of Fear. Notable for its use of an electronic soundtrack by the German band Tangerine Dream and its $20m budget, Sorcerer proved a costly flop for the director of The French Connection and The Exorcist and effectively ended Crémer's international career, even if he also appeared in Money, the thriller directed by Steven Hilliard Stern in 1991.
Crémer was the youngest of three children born to a Flemish music-loving mother and a businessman from Lille who had taken up Belgian nationality so he could join up at the start of the First World War. The scar on his upper lip, which toughened up his looks, was the result of a bicycle accident in 1936, when he was seven.
He got the a Bruno Jean Marie Cremer (6 October 1929 – 7 August 2010) was a French actor best known for portraying Jules Maigret on French television, from 1991 to 2005. Bruno Cremer was born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, France. His mother, Jeanne Rullaert, a musician, was of Belgian Flemish origin and his father, Georges, was a businessman from Lille who, though born French, had taken out Belgian nationality after the French armed forces refused to accept him for service in the First World War. Bruno himself opted for French nationality when he reached the age of 18. His childhood was largely spent in Paris. Bruno attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school. Having completed his secondary studies, he followed an interest in acting which had interested him since the age of 12 and trained in acting from 1952 at France's highly selective Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique (English: French National Academy of Dramatic Arts). His career began with ten years spent acting in live theatre, playing roles drawn from works of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Jean Anouilh. Aged already 30, he created the role of Thomas Becket in the 1959 world premiere of Anouilh's Becket, and held Anouilh in veneration all his life. Later Cremer played Max in a French production of Bent by Martin Sherman in 1981. He regarded his basic profession as that of a stage actor, though he gravitated firmly to films. It was in 1957 that Cremer had his first credited part in a film, Quand la femme s'en mêle (When a woman meddles), which starred Alain Delon. However, it was in 1965 that Cremer's career really began to prosper, with the film La 317e section, (The 317th Platoon), directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer and set in Indochina during the French colonial wars. From then onwards, Cremer became a popular actor and appeared in over 110 productions for cinema and television. While Cremer tried to avoid labels and typecasting, he tended to be offered .Biography