His first acting experiences dated back to his high school years during which he staged some of Chekhov’s plays with his comrades.

He initially wanted to study literature but one of his teachers encouraged him to become an actor instead, so that he joined the Conservatoire National where he became close friends with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Rochefort and from where he left with the comedy second prize in 1954.

In La Valise [fr] (1974) he played an Israeli spy having to hide in a trunk in order to be extracted from a country in the Middle East.

One of his best performances, which is also probably his darkest, lies in his wonderful interpretation of a disillusioned and suicidal cop in Les mois d'avril sont meurtriers [fr] (1987).

In parallel he made a brilliant stage career and received the highest French award for a theater actor, the Molière, in 1994.