[2] He took acting classes under the tutelage of Maurice Escande, a member of the Comédie Française, and made his stage debut in the play La première étape in 1944.

[4] In the mid-1940s Michel Bouquet began working with the playwright Jean Anouilh and director André Barsacq, who staged plays at the Théâtre de l'Atelier in Montmartre.

Bouquet played many roles from the classical repertoire at the Festival d'Avignon, created by Vilar in 1947 (Henry IV in 1950, The Tragedy of King Richard II in 1953, and The Miser in 1962).

Bouquet went on to act in several Chabrol films and received wide acclaim for his performances[3] in The Unfaithful Wife, The Breach, and Just Before Nightfall.

With François Truffaut he shoots as Comolli, the private detective murdered by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Mississippi Mermaid (1969) and as one of the victims of Jeanne Moreau in The Bride Wore Black.

[14] In the 1970s Bouquet is the obstinate cop who terrorized Alain Delon in Deux hommes dans la ville (1972),[15] candidate for legislative elections in Defense de savoir (1973) by Nadine Trintignant, the hospitalized press boss who is surrounded by Claude Jade in Les Anneaux de Bicêtre (1976),[16] but in the same year he was also the formidable billionaire in the comedy Le Jouet by Francis Veber.

[17] In this decade he played two dark roles for André Cayatte, in Il n'y a pas de fumée sans feu and La Raison d'État.

[19] Over the years, Bouquet recorded his readings of the works of Cervantes, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre and other authors that were released on discs.

An audio book of his readings of 13 selected fables of Jean de La Fontaine was released in 2019 to wide critical acclaim.