Acting
Oct 9, 1955
Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France
Hippolyte Girardot
Acting
Biography
Hippolyte Girardot (born Frédéric Girardot; 10 October 1955) is a French actor, film director and screenwriter. A loner, Hippolyte Girardot set out to be an illustrator. He dreamt of working as production designer on the film set and tempted his chance at the entrance exam to the Arts Déco. While there, he was offered the project of a series of shorts working with a group of adolescents from the suburbs in a workshop setting. Even if he made his first appearance on the silver screen as the son of actor Claude Rich in "John's Wife" by Yannick Bellon, who was a friend of his mother's, he still had no intention of becoming an actor and continued to take on the various jobs proposed. Hippolyte Girardot developed a taste for acting while filming "The Destiny of Juliette" (1983) by Aline Issermann, and again with the same director for "L'Amant magnifique". He got his first nods from the profession when he was nominated for Most Promising Young Actor in 1985 for "Le Bon Plaisir", continuing his career with Godard ("First Name: Carmen") and other A film projects, notably in "Fort Saganne" and "Jean de Florette II" in which he plays a school teacher in love with Emmanuelle Beart. His film acclaim arrived in 1990 with "A World Without Pity", a disenchanted observation of society by Eric Rochant; his character Hippo resonated with an entire generation: ironically aimless yet charming. The following year, Girardot landed the lead role playing a photographer taken hostage in Lebanon in "Out of Life" by Maroun Bagdadi. He incarnated the mysterious seducer ("After Love", "The Scent of Yvonne"), but more often found himself performing in comedies: completely crazy in "Barjo" and unemployed in "Long Live the Republic" (1997) by close collaborator, Eric Rochant. After working for the television for a few years, his return to film was acclaimed in "Rashevski's Tango" in 2003. Joining the Desplechin film universe, Hippolyte Girardot gave notable performances as a business man in "Playing 'In the Company of Men'", a crooked lawyer involved in drugs in "Kings and Queen" (2004) and Anne Consigny's husband in "A Christmas Tale". Other renowned directors with whom he has collaborated include Pascal Bonitzer and Pascale Ferran ("Lady Chatterley"), and in 2006, he juggled a formidable acting career, appearing in no less than six films. After his role as a shaddy doctor in "Crime Is Our Business", his roles began to become more and more original: the alter ego of Jerome Clement in "Later" by Amos Gitai and Nanni Moretti's partner in "Quiet Chaos". He had a spell at co-directing with Nobuhiro Suwa for the film "Yuki & Nina", a touchy look at childhood that was presented at the Directors' Fortnight in 2009. Continuing to accept roles in films with a political message, he will appear in "Les Mains en l'air", which denounces Italian fascism in the year 2067, and take the lead in the dark comedy "Dernier étage gauche gauche" in which he plays a bailiff taken hostage in a housing projects building, both films to be released in 2010.
Feature Films (112)
Freshly installed in a country house with her husband and their 6-month-old son, Agathe discovers a child's bedroom that had previously been locked behind a partition. Untouched, nothing seems to have moved since the 90s. Even the old baby monitor abandoned in a drawer is still functional. Buoyed by her husband's enthusiasm, the young mother agrees to install their son there, at the price of hanging on to the device, listening for the slightest noise. But when strange emanations sow doubt and confusion in Agathe's mind, she will have to sort out her new environment, her latent fatigue and her maternal anxieties.
Babyphone
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
Paris Je T'aime
After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.
Lady Chatterley
In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.
Fort Saganne
In this, the sequel to Jean de Florette, Manon has grown into a beautiful young shepherdess living in the idyllic Provencal countryside. She plots vengeance on the men who greedily conspired to acquire her father's land years earlier.
Manon of the Spring
Television & Series (24)
Drama series that explores Voltaire's early life and evolution. It reveals aspects of the gifted philosopher's life that received less attention: Voltaire the adventurer, lover, man of justice who had an obscure relationship with royalty.
Voltaire in Love
A young hitchhiker introduces characters who are about to experience a frightening and sometimes supernatural incident of some kind in this moody anthology series.
The Hitchhiker
A critical and often humorous look at the upper class, tracking the protagonist's harrowing odyssey from a deeply traumatic childhood through adult substance abuse and, ultimately, toward recovery.
Patrick Melrose
Murders in... is a collection of French-Belgian police TV movies taking place each time in a different French city and region.
Murders in...
A doctor searching frantically for her missing baby daughter finds herself tangled in a web of ruthless criminals, suspicious cops and dark secrets.
