Bruno Cremer

Biography: life and films

Bruno Cremer was born on 6th October 1929, at Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France. At the age of 12, he had made up his mind to become an actor and as soon as he could he enrolled at Paris's elite drama school, le Conservatoire. Here, he rubbed shoulders with such promising young talent as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Rochefort.

Cremer made his stage debut in 1953 at the Théâtre de l'Ouvre in Jules Supervielle's Robinson. For much of the following decade, he would devote himself to his theatre work, appearing in such diverse plays as Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, William Shakespeare's Pericles and Jean Anouilh's Becket ou l'Honneur de Dieu, earning himself a reputation as one of France's most promising young actors.

Cremer's film career began in earnest when Pierre Schoendoerffer gave him his first leading role in La 317e Section (1965). He had already appeared in a handful of films in small roles but this is where his screen career took off. Other film directors were not slow to see Cremer's talent for playing complex and ambiguous characters with depth, introspection and authenticity. He would work with some of the finest filmmakers in the industry, including: Costa-Gavras (Section spéciale, 1975), Claude Lelouch (Le Bon et les méchants, 1976), Bertrand Blier (Tenue de soirée, 1986) and François Ozon (Sous le sable, 2000). In the 1990s, Cremer found his largest audience as Inspector Maigret in a French television series that ran for 54 episodes, from 1991 to 2005.

In 2003, Bruno Cremer published his autobiography, Un certain jeune homme. After suffering from cancer for several years, Cremer died on 7th August 2010 in a Paris hospital. He is survived by his wife Chantal (whom he married in 1984), his two daughters and his son Stéphane (a successful writer). For many, he will be remembered as the definitive screen incarnation of Simenon's pipe-smoking sleuth Maigret.

Filmography