Michel Charrel

Michel Charrel — Biography

Michel Charrel was born on 13 September 1936 in the French town of Tarare, the son of a family that ran a grocery shop, and earned his baccalaureate from the well-known film school Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. He is best remembered for roles in Fantômas, Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour, Le Pacha, Murmur of the Heart and Flic Story, now classics of French cinema.

His major roles began arriving in the 1960s and his filmography widened through the 1970s, but Charrel kept working well into the new century, appearing in Regular Lovers (2005), Irreplaceable (2016), De plus belle (2017) and The Salt of Tears (2020) for a screen career spanning nearly sixty years. Alongside acting he was also a published author, with the books L'Album (2003), Jésus l'asiatique (2004), Femme musulmane, séropositive (2005) and Le hameau du Rossignol (2008) to his name. Charrel died on 14 February 2026 in the 15th arrondissement of Paris at the age of 89.