Malet's stage debut came in La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu as Troilus alongside Claude Jade in 1975.
In 1978 he was made famous by his role as Andrew alongside Donald Sutherland, Lisa Langlois and Stéphane Audran in Les Liens de Sang by Claude Chabrol.
He also played Roger Bataille in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle (after Jean Genet), and starred alongside Sandrine Bonnaire in 1984's Tir à vue, directed by Marc Angelo.
Highly attached to his brother and mother, he feels asked by the latter (in the terminal stages of a brain tumour) to put an end to her sufferings.
He writes of this in his 2006 book En attendant la suite, in which he calls on the candidates in the presidential election to bring the state to legislate on euthanasia.