Jacques Charrier

French actor and film producer Jacques Charrier (1936) played leading roles in the late 1950s and 1960s but gained notoriety when he married Brigitte Bardot. Their brief, tumultuous marriage was punctuated by his personal problems. He also worked as a film producer, and an artist in painting and ceramics.


German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-264. Photo: UFA.


French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 25. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Diary of Anne Frank

Jacques Joseph Henri Charrier was born into a family of military men in Metz, France, in 1936. Growing up with six siblings, he was supposed to pursue a military career like his father.

Jacques broke with the family tradition to become an artist. At the age of 17, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg where he tried ceramics.

In 1956, a teacher at the Conservatoire de Montpellier offered him a role in a local film, L'Arlésienne based on a novel by Alphonse Daudet. This success stimulated him to try his luck in Paris.

As a 20-year old he entered the ENSATT (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre), where he studied with the actress Berthe Bovy.

In 1958, after some odd jobs, he became an extra at the famous Comédie-Française. Then Marguerite Chamois chose him to play one of the leading roles in the play 'Le Journal d'Anne Frank' (The Diary of Anne Frank) with Pascale Audret at the Théâtre Montparnasse.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4519. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, nro AX 4072. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958).


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4071. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958).

The Cheaters

There the famous film director Marcel Carné saw Jacques Charrier and offered him his first film role, Bob Letellier, a good-looking rich kid who studies science, in Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Pascale Petit.

Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters is a study of the rebellious, existentialist youth of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Latin Quarter of Paris. The film was harshly judged by young French critics upon release, but became a massive box office hit in France, with admissions of 4,953,600. Overnight Jacques Charrier became a star.

Next, he played a lead role in the drama Les dragueurs/The Chasers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959). He and Charles Aznavour played two young men, Freddy and Joseph, who go out looking for girls one night, hoping to find the right girl.

Then he acted in the comedy-drama La main chaude/The Itchy Palm (Gérard Oury, 1960), and the thriller L'oeil du malin/The Third Lover (Claude Chabrol, 1961) with Stéphane Audran.


French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 27. Photo: Sam Lévin.


French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 71. Photo: Sam Lévin.


French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 66. Photo: Sam Lévin.

BB

Brigitte Bardot chose Jacques Charrier as her leading man in the comedy Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jacque, 1959).

During the shooting of the film Brigitte and Jacques fell madly in love. Immediately after the production was finished they married under massive media attention.

At the time, Jacques was just 23 years old, and a year later he became the father of their son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier (1960). BB’s baby was again a media event.

Charrier made headlines when he made several suicide attempts and when he withdrew from the National Service on health grounds. In 1962, Jacques and Brigitte divorced and from then on he took care of their son.


Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4518. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa. Publicity still for Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (1959) with Brigitte Bardot.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb.


German postcard by Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.625. Retail price: 0,20 MDN. Photo: Progress. Still from La Vie Conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage (1963) with Marie-José Nat.

Anatomy of a marriage

Jacques Charrier continued acting in films like the comedy À cause, à cause d'une femme/Because of a Woman (Michel Deville, 1962) opposite Mylène Demongeot, and Carmen 63/Carmen di Trastevere (Carmine Gallone, 1963).

Unique was the experiment Françoise ou la vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise and Jean-Marc ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (André Cayatte, both 1964). The two films tell the same story, but the first one was made from the wife's point of view, and the second from the husband's.

In 1969 Jacques founded the film company Les Films Marquise to produce low-budget films. He produced and starred in films like Sirokkó/Winter Wind (Miklos Jancso, 1969) with Marina Vlady, Eglantine (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1971), and Les volets clos/Closed Shutters (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1973) with Marie Bell.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 960. Presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.


German Postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2744. Photo: Silver / Cinetel / Gloria-Film. Publicity still for Les tricheurs/The Cheaters (1958).


German Postcard by Kolibri-Verlag no. 824. Photo: Deutsche Cosmopol Film. Publicity still for Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (1959).

A Damning Riposte

In the 1980s he returned to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study painting. His work is marked by references to his two passions: travel and Antiquity and would be exhibited in Paris, Genève and San Francisco.

In 1996 he found himself back in the media spotlights once more when Brigitte Bardot's best-selling memoir, 'Initiales BB'. She described her former husband as "a violent, alcoholic macho". To her pregnancy, she referred to as a 'tumour' growing inside her.

Both Charrier and their son, Nicolas Charrier, both successfully sued her for "violation of privacy". Bardot and her publisher were ordered to pay 250,000 francs to Jacques and Nicholas Charrier. In 1997 Jacques also published 'Ma réponse à Brigitte Bardot'(My Answer to Brigitte Bardot), a damning riposte to his ex-wife.

After his marriage to Bardot, Charrier married three more times. In 1964, he wed France Louis-Dreyfus, of the Louis-Dreyfus family, with whom he had two daughters, Sophie and Marie, before divorcing in 1967. In 1982, he met his third wife Linda with whom he had one daughter, Rosalie.

Since 1997, Jacques Charrier has lived in Paris again. In 2009, he married Japanese artist Makiko Kumano. In 2008, Charrier exhibited a number of his paintings at the Espace Cardin in Paris and in 2012, he exhibited at the Yves Klein Archives in Paris.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 120A, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Ufa.


Scene from Les Tricheurs (1958). Source: Le canard en rut (Daily Motion)

Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 20 September 2023.