He was one of the best known performers at Bruno Coquatrix's Paris Olympia music hall, and toured with musicians including Didi Duprat.

(music by Henri Betti and lyrics by Édith Piaf) at the Théâtre de l'Étoile.

In 1986, after his international box-office draw power had fallen off considerably, the 65-year-old Montand gave one of his best remembered performances, as the scheming uncle in Jean de Florette, co-starring Gérard Depardieu, and Manon des Sources (both 1986), co-starring Emmanuelle Béart.

The film was a worldwide critical hit and revived Montand's profile in the United States, where he made an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman.

The marriage was, by all accounts, fairly harmonious, lasting until her death in 1985, although Montand had a number of well-publicised affairs, notably with American actress Marilyn Monroe, with whom he starred in one of her final films, Let's Make Love.

In a paternity suit that caused commotion across France, another woman accused Montand of being the father of her daughter and went to court to obtain a DNA sample from him.

In a court ruling that made international headlines, the woman won the right to have Montand exhumed and a sample taken.

In 2004, Catherine Allégret, Signoret's daughter from her first marriage to director Yves Allégret, alleged in her autobiography Un monde a l'envers (A World Upside Down) that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather from the age of five; his behaviour apparently continuing for many years,[13] and that he had a "more than equivocal attitude to her" as she got older.