“Fuck Michel… What did you do to us…”. Very close to Michel Blanc, his friend from Splendid, Gérard Jugnot, was the first to react to the death of Michel Blanc, during the night from Thursday to Friday. Since then, there have been numerous reactions following the disappearance of the one who will forever remain Jean-Claude Dusse, even if the depth of his acting had allowed him to be much more than a “magnificent loser”.
“I can’t imagine that he’s no longer here,” reacts Patrice Leconte on RTL, one of his favorite directors, in The Bronzed, Come to my house, I’m staying with a friendor even Mr Hire. “I’m wondering how this is possible. What I’m going to miss is him, who he was.” In a few words, Josiane Balasko sums up all her emotion on Instagram. “Michel my friend my brother my partner”. “Everything was fine, we saw each other not long ago for the cover of Paris Match, we laughed like idiots, as usual,” adds Gérard Jugnot on RTL, stunned by this “massive blow “.
Jean-Luc Reichmann salutes “the memory of a man so funny on screen and so elegant in life”. Director Jean-Marie Poiré talks about its “incredible funnyness. He knew all the songs in the French repertoire by heart. He sang nonsense songs most of the time. It’s a great loss because he was a wonderful actor.”
Hakim Jemili mourns his “cinema dad”
“This morning the pain is immense, commensurate with his talent. In front of the camera of Bertrand Blier, Robert Altman or Pierre Schoeller, Michel Blanc will have amazed us with the variety of his acting, but also by his talents as a director, testifies the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati. Cinema, the world of culture and all French people will not forget it. »
The younger generation also pays tribute to him. Pierre Niney hails a “huge actor, funny and profound, simple and touching. His kindness and talent impressed me so much during my first film shoot. I was 18, I played his son. I knew I wanted to be an actor thanks to this kind of encounter. » Hakim Jemili mourns his “friend” and his “cinema dad”. “Thank you for making me grow as a human and teaching me how to act in front of the camera. You taught me the craft of acting, you taught me to be fair and natural.”
His personality and his character of Jean-Claude Dusse have entered the collective imagination. It is perhaps the Toulouse football club which pays him one of the most beautiful tributes on “On a misunderstanding, it can work.”