“He taught me so much, made me discover authors, painters — a certain art of living, with elegance and discretion,” the great Bertrand Tavernier has written about the late Phillipe Noiret. “He gave me a sense of actors and showed me that one could be exacting and passionate while remaining pleasant and gentle.
“He was a very generous actor who loved his co-stars — Michael Galabru in The Judge and the Assassin, Isabelle Huppert and Eddy Mitchell in Coup de Torchon, Fran√É∆í√Ǭßois Perrot and Sabine Azema in Life and Nothing But…Jean Rochefort, Claude Rich, Jean Vilar and Gerard Philippe.
“Listening to him talk of the old days, of Hitchcock and Gary Cooper, flooded you with warmth. He loved to love, and his admirations were contagious. You got the sense that they fortified him. We were always talking about the breadth of our admirations — for Gary Cooper, who we both wished we had known, for Hitchcock, Fred Astaire, Mario Monicelli, Marcello Mastroianni and Marco Ferreri.