01/06/2007

Tributes poured in Thursday for the much-loved French actor and filmmaker Jean-Claude Brialy, one of the stars of New Wave cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, following his death aged 74.

With a career spanning four decades, Brialy worked with some of the best directors of his generation, including the New Wave pioneers Francois Truffaut, Louis Malle and Jean-Luc Godard.

Born in Algeria in March 1933, the son of a French colonel, Brialy discovered cinema during his military service when he worked in an army film unit. Training as a stage actor, he headed to Paris in 1954 where he quickly fell in with the young French film crowd, including Jacques Rivette who gave him his first role in the 1956 short movie, Fool's Mate. After walk-on parts in a string of hit movies including Truffaut's 1959 classic The 400 blows and Malle's Frantic in 1957, fame arrived in 1958 with lead roles in two Claude Chabrol films, Le Beau Serge and The Cousins. The success kickstarted his marathon career as an actor, including as the lead in Jean-Luc Godard's 1961 hit A woman is a woman, and then director, with a dozen works to his name since the 1971 Eglantine.

A household name in French film whose close friends included the late actress Romy Schneider, Brialy had owned a popular Paris theatre, Les Bouffes du Nord since 1986 and was a regular guest on radio and television.

He died Wednesday evening at his home, of a long illness.