Guy Marchand is dead: the interpreter of Nestor Burma was 86 years old

Four times nominated for the César for Best Supporting Role, the actor and musician had worked for Bertrand Tavernier, Maurice Pialat, Claude Zidi…

He had never stopped filming: his last appearance in the cinema was last April, in The most beautiful to go dancing by Victoria Bedos. Since his first appearance in the cinema, in 1970 in Boulevard du Rhum by Robert Enrico, Guy Marchand had made at least one film per year – with a break from 1990 to 1995, the period when he notably became the definitive face of Nestor Burma on television. The series had 39 episodes, broadcast from 1991 to 2003, which were enough to make the actor one of the legends of French 90s TV alongside the Maigret by Bruno Cremer.

Born in the 19th arrondissement and raised in Belleville: if we subscribed to the clichés, we would say that Guy Marchand was predestined to play the cheeky private detective from Paris created by Léo Malet, whom neither Michel Galabru nor Michel Serrault had been able to grasp the essence in previous adaptations. Reducing Marchand to Burma would be a little unfair: he was actually very good in two 80s thrillers where he played more or less the same role, that of a cop who was not really upstanding, not really disillusioned in Jail with Lino Ventura and in Drowning prohibited with Philippe Noiret – a role which earned him a nomination for the César for Best Supporting Role. In total, he received four nominations in this category, for Loulou by Maurice Pialat, Thunderbolt by Diane Kurys and In Paris (2007) by Christophe Honoré. We also saw it in Wipe by Bertrand Tavernier, Summer on a gentle slope by Gérard Krawczyk, Ripoux versus ripoux by Claude Zidi, Deadly hike by Claude Miller (written by Jacques and Michel Audiard)… And in 1982, he played the journalist Marc Covet in Nestor Burma, shock detective where Serrault plays the role of the detective. Nine years later, it would be Marchand’s turn.

He was also a musician (he released nineteen jazz and blues albums): the real cult moment of his film is when he sings Destiny In The Under-Gifted on vacation. The song to which Thierry Lhermitte and Christian Clavier dance in Santa Clause is garbage, currently on Netflix. Comment from Clavier: “It’s a good slow”.