The French-Danish actor Niels Arestrup passed away on Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024, according to his wife, the actor and writer Isabelle Le Nouvel. While he may not be well-known by mainstream Western audiences, he holds the record in France for the most César Awards for Best Supporting Actor, and has starred in films by many of Europe’s best directors — Alain Resnais, Chantal Akerman, Claude Lelouch, Marco Ferreri, Jacques Audiard, Julian Schnabel, Bertrand Tavernier, Volker Schlöndorff, and Albert Dupontel, not to mention American directors like Steven Spielberg and Angelina Jolie. His wife wrote in an AFP press release:
I am extremely sad to announce the death of my husband, the immense actor Niels Arestrup, after a courageous fight against illness. He passed away surrounded by the love of his family.
Born to working-class parents and spending his youth in public housing projects, Arestrup failed school and took on odd jobs until he found his way into the theater at the end of the ’60s. His stage career found him performing in plays from many of the great playwrights — Molière, Anton Chekhov, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, August Strindberg, Sam Shepard, Anton Tchekhov, and Edward Albee. Meanwhile, he took TV jobs and slowly became a familiar face in French cinema.
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An Actor Who Lived and Breathed Cinema
Arestrup was a kind and brilliant artist, and directors often worked with him more than once, a testament to his amiable skill. His work with Jacques Audiard is perhaps his most famous, resulting in two award-winning performances and films — The Beat That My Heart Skipped (a dark character study that remakes James Toback’s ’70s thriller, Fingers) and A Prophet (the Cannes-winning masterpiece about surviving prison and gang life).
Just some of the actors Arestrup worked with include: Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Max von Sydow, Miou-Miou, Maria Schneider, Willem Dafoe, Mads Mikkelsen, Oscar Isaac, Isabelle Huppert, Glenn Close, Marion Cotillard, Mathieu Amalric, Melanie Laurent, Romain Duris, Emily Watson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Brad Pitt, Stellan Skarsgård, Angelina Jolie, Jeanne Moreau, and more.
In MovieWeb’s opinion, aside from the aforementioned Audiard films, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of Arestrup’s greatest movies. You can rent or buy it on the usual digital platforms, such as Google Play, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and on Prime Video through the link below:
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