Noiret was born in
Lille, France, the son of Lucy (Heirman) and Pierre Noiret, a clothing company representative. He was an indifferent student and attended several prestigious Paris schools, including the
Lycée Janson de Sailly. He failed several times to pass his
baccalauréat exams, so he decided to study theater. He trained at the Centre Dramatique de l'Ouest and toured with the Théâtre National Populaire for seven years, where he met
Monique Chaumette, whom he married in 1962. During that time he developed a career as a nightclub comedian in a duo act with
Jean-Pierre Darras, in which he played
Louis XIV in an extravagant wig opposite Darras as the dramatist
Jean Racine. In these roles they satirized the politics of
Charles de Gaulle,
Michel Debré and
André Malraux. Noiret's screen debut (1949) was an uncredited role in
Gigi. In 1955 he appeared in
La Pointe Courte directed by
Agnès Varda. She said later, "I discovered in him a breadth of talent rare in a young actor." Sporting a
pudding-basin haircut, Noiret played a lovelorn youth in the southern fishing port of
Sète. He later admitted: "I was scared stiff, and fumbled my way through the part—I am totally absent in the film." He was not cast again until 1960 in
Zazie dans le Métro. After playing second leads in
Georges Franju's
Thérèse Desqueyroux in 1962, and in
Le Capitaine Fracasse, from
Théophile Gautier's romantic adventure, he became a regular on the French screen, without being cast in major roles until
A Matter of Resistance directed by
Jean-Paul Rappeneau in 1966. He became a star in France with
Yves Robert's
Alexandre le Bienheureux. "When I began to have success in the movies," Noiret told film critic
Joe Leydon at the
Cannes Film Festival in 1989, "it was a big surprise for me. For actors of my generation—all the men of 50 or 60 now in French movies—all of us were thinking of being stage actors. Even people like
Jean-Paul Belmondo, all of us, we never thought we'd become movie stars. So, at the beginning, I was just doing it for the money, and because they asked me to do it. But after two or three years of working on movies, I started to enjoy it, and to be very interested in it. And I'm still very interested in it, because I've never really understood how it works. I mean, what is acting for the movies? I've never really understood." Noiret was cast primarily as the
Everyman character, although he did not hesitate to accept controversial roles, such as in
La Grande Bouffe, a film about suicide by overeating, which caused a scandal at Cannes in 1973, and in 1991
André Téchiné cast Noiret in ''
J'embrasse pas'' (I Don't Kiss), as a melancholy old homosexual obsessed with young male flesh. And in 1987, in
The Gold Rimmed Glasses based on
Giorgio Bassani's novel about the cramped social life of post-war
Ferrara in Italy, he played an elderly and respectable doctor who is gradually suspected of being a covert homosexual with a passion for a beautiful young man (
Rupert Everett). Noiret won his first
César Award for his role in
Vieux Fusil in 1976. His second César came in 1990 for his role in
Life and Nothing But. Noiret was a passionate horseman, and found solace on horseback. He often shared the passion with actor friends Jean Rochefort and Jean-Pierre Marielle. Noiret appeared in Hollywood-financed films by
Alfred Hitchcock (
Topaz),
George Cukor (
Justine),
Ted Kotcheff (
Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?),
Peter Yates (''
Murphy's War) and Anatole Litvak (The Night of the Generals). But he may be best known for his roles as Alfredo in Cinema Paradiso (1988), Pablo Neruda in Il Postino'', and Major Dellaplane in
Bertrand Tavernier's
Life and Nothing But. . By the time of his death from
cancer in Paris in 2006, aged 76, Noiret had more than 100 film roles to his credit. He often joked with interviewers about his virtually non-stop work schedule, telling
Joe Leydon in 1989: "You never know what will be the success of a film. And it's always comfortable to be making another film when you're reading terrible notices for your last film. You can say, 'Well, that's a pity, but I'm already working on another job.' It helps in your living. You see, if you're only making one film a year, or one film every year and a half, it's hard. Because when it's a failure, what do you do? What do you become? You're dead." ==Awards==