जीवनी

Subtle, internalized acting style

Frequently collaborates with Claude Chabrol, Jean Anouilh and Gabriel Axel

Often stars opposite wife Juliette Carré

Often plays bourgeois types

Roles in Molière adaptations

He can't swim, never practiced any sport and doesn't have a driving licence. On the set of La femme infidèle (1969), director Claude Chabrol insisted that he'd learn to drive for a few scenes. After a two months driving course, Bouquet almost ran over the movie's camera operator, future writer/director Claude Zidi, while shooting the scene where his character, Charles, has to park his car near a drugstore. After the accident, he immediately decided to give up any attempt to learn driving.

He's known to need a lot of concentration on the set of a movie. During the shooting of Il manoscritto del principe (2000), Italian character actor Leopoldo Trieste was constantly distracting Bouquet by talking to him while he was trying to get in character. One very day, this caused Bouquet to explode and furiously scream to Trieste to shut up. Trieste, who couldn't speak a word of French, didn't understand that this fit of anger was directed at him and reproached the other people on the set for having broken Bouquet's concentration.

He loves the cinema of Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang.

He has huge admiration for the acting abilities of his occasional co-star, the late actor Maurice Ronet.

Bruno Cremer, Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean-Paul Belmondo have all been greatly inspired by Bouquet's stage performances. Marielle stated that they preferred Michel's "devilish, black magnetism" to the "angelic" side of Gérard Philipe.