Michel Constantin

Sportsman turned actor who became a favourite of French cinema-goers


Monday, 1 September 2003q The Independent




Born Constantin Hokloff in 1924 to a Russian father and a Polish mother who had settled in the Paris suburbs, he got a job on the Renault production line when he was 14. At the end of the Second World War, he set up his own company, which he claimed became "the biggest French manufacturer of knitting needles". The young Hokloff was also a keen sportsman who played basketball and excelled at volley-ball, turning out for Racing de Paris and the French national team which eventually he captained.


Indeed, volley-ball proved the making of him in more ways than one. During an international tournament, he met his future wife Maurine, who played for the Algerian team. Equally fortuitously, the acclaimed director Jacques Becker was watching his son play for Racing alongside Hokloff and decided to cast the rugged sportsman as Jo in the prison escape drama Le Trou (The Hole, 1960). Taking up the stage name Michel Constantin, he joined a cast of unknowns in what was to be Becker's last film.


But, even after the plaudits he received for his gritty performance in Le Trou, Constantin was reluctant to give up his job as a journalist on L'Equipe, the French sports daily. "I thought Le Trou was the end of the acting experience and experiment," he told interviewers later. "For a while, I managed to juggle both careers but, come the autumn of 1966, I had to resign from the newspaper."


By then, Constantin had acted in Maigret Voit Rouge (Maigret Sees Red, 1963), starring Jean Gabin as the detective, and renewed his friendship with Ventura in Les Grandes Gueules and Ne Nous Fâ chons Pas (Let's Not Get Angry, 1965). He was the gangster lead of Mise à Sac (Pillaged, 1967) and Ventura's sidekick again as cops looking for a witness in Dernier Domicile Connu (Last Known Address, 1969). In spite of his looks, he was seduced by Bernadette Lafont in the erotic comedy La Fiancé e Du Pirate (The Pirate's Fiancé e, 1969) and appeared opposite Charles Aznavour and Robert Hossein in Jean Larriaga's La Part Des Lions (1971).


The Seventies saw Constantin return to his trademark parts in Les Caï ds (Big Shots, 1972) and as the bachelor cop playing the family man in Il Etait Une Fois Un Flic (Flic Story, 1972). He eventually grew disillusioned with the film industry. "I got tired of being a puppet and having to obey the orders of clueless directors with no imagination whatsoever," he said.


His most notable Eighties role was alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo in the Foreign Legion adventure Les Morfalous (1984). In the Nineties, Constantin was still a regular presence on French television, with guest appearances on game shows and the series Paparoff in which he portrayed a retired policeman. In 1973, he published an autobiography, Ma Grande Gueule: du volley-ball au ciné ma ("My Ugly Mug: from volley-ball to cinema".


Pierre Perrone