Patrick Chesnais

Husband of actress Josiane Stoléru.

Patrick Chesnais entered at the age of 18 at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in the classes of Lise Delamare and René Simon. In 1968, he obtained the First Prize for Comedy, and, for ten years, he devoted himself fully to the theater. It was in 1976 that he made his debut in front of Jacques Rozier's camera with Les Naufragés de l'île de la Tortue. In 35 years of career, Patrick Chesnais has played in more than fifty films. From the role of an inflexible foreman in L'Empreinte des géants (1980) to that of an idealist journalist in L'Oeil du maître, including those of a suicidal businessman in La Provinciale (1981) and 'a gypsy in Les Sacrifiés (1983),

In 1988, he played Miou-Miou in La Lectrice, a film for which he won the César for Best Supporting Actor in 1989. Collaborating twice with Claude Lelouch (Il ya des jours ... et des lunes et La Nice story), Patrick Chesnais, in his dashing forties, becomes the mustached mumbling, seductive and grumpy that the French public is fond of. Illustrating himself in the popular comedies Les Cigognes do as they wish (1988) and Promotion sofa (1989), he devoted himself enormously to the small screen before trying his hand at directing with Charming boy (2000), a successful comedy for which he won the Alain Poiré Prize for Best Director at the St Jean-de-Luz Festival.

From then on, his cinematographic career found a second wind under the leadership of a new generation of filmmakers with promising talent: Manuel Poirier (Te Quiero), Eric Assous (Very opposite Sexes) or even Rémy Waterhouse (Thousand thousandths, real estate fantasy). Father of the fake ingenuous Judith Godrèche in Philippe Harel's comedy Tu vas rire mais je t'arte (2004), he finds roles of the very first order, those of a bailiff passionate about tango in I am not there to be loved (2005) and a has-been singer on the comeback in Une chanson dans la tête (2008). He is also found alongside Nathalie Baye in Le Prix à payer (2006), Michaël Youn in Héros (2007) and Mathieu Amalric in Le Scaphandre et le papillon.

In parallel to his film career, he participated in the television series Duel en ville and Kaamelott by Alexandre Astier in the late 2000s. Oscillating between drama (La Jeune fille et les loups) and comedy (Une chanson dans la tête), Patrick Chesnais connects three films dealing with complex relationships between friends and family in Home Sweet Home (2008), Something to tell you (2009) and Le Code A Changé by Danièle Thompson. We find him in 2010 in Guyana, lost in the middle of the jungle alongside Clovis Cornillac and Bruno Solo in 600 kilos of pure gold.

The actor continues to be very prolific; we can thus see his debonair draw in different registers such as comedy (Vieilles Canailles, The List of my desires, The Great Sharing), the drama (You will be my son, Bienvenue among us, Winter Red) or the romance (Les Beaux Days). In 2016 Chesnais is showing two new comedy, July and August of Diastème in which he plays a stepfather manhandled by his beautiful teenage daughters, and The one expected from Serge Avédikian. In this film, he plays Jean-Paul Bolzec, gone to play his show for a French company based in Azerbaijan. On the way back to the airport, the taxi breaks down. Bolzec is abandoned on a desert road, in the middle of nowhere. Without realizing it, he crossed the border with Armenia on foot,