Sacha Briquet

Over the course of 60 years, Sacha Briquet led a fascinating and varied career. He was a cast member of several French New Wave films and appeared on the big screen opposite talents ranging from Catherine Deneuve to Rob Lowe. He was among Marlene Dietrich's confidantes, and he even found time to write a memoir about his life as a not-quite-famous thespian, charmingly titled "Actor, Why Not? ." Born in a suburb of Paris, Briquet began working intermittently as a professional actor in the early 1950s. His career picked up steam early in the next decade when New Wave director Claude Chabrol cast Briquet in a series of influential films, among them the enigmatic ensemble drama "The Good Time Girls" and an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Ophelia." His status as one of Chabrol's go-to actors didn't go unnoticed within the clubby world of Parisian cinema. Briquet landed a key role in legendary French director Jean Renoir's 1962 film "The Elusive Corporal," and he found work alongside a young Deneuve in both 1964's "Male Companion" and 1968's "The Diary of an Innocent Boy." In the 1970s, Briquet worked primarily on the small screen, most famously on the French children's program "L'Ile aux Enfants." But he still found assorted film work, appearing with Jean-Luc Godard's onetime muse Anna Karina in 1984's "Ave Maria" and with Lowe in the 1990 television film "If the Shoe Fits."