Jacques Nolot

Jacques Nolot (; born 31 August 1943) is a French actor, screenwriter and film director. Life and career Jacques Nolot was born on 31 August 1943, Marciac, Gers, a small village in Southwest France. A fragile child, Nolot was doted upon by his mother, a woman who had three children with three different men. An illegitimate child, Nolot's family environment was troublesome and from an early age he wanted to run away from home. "The sole elegance my parents had was to allow me to leave. And then to die quickly" he later explained in an interview. At age 16, he was working at the village's grocery store, when a tourist stopping there offered him to take him to Paris. In the French capital, he worked selling vegetables while taking acting classes. At age seventeen, he decided to move to Cannes in order to become a star. Young and without economical resources, he became the lover of a rich woman and later began hustling for men. His life was the street. At age nineteen, he met Roland Barthes, who was more than twenty years his senior. They became lovers. Barthes introduced him to Parisian intellectuals among them André Téchiné. In the 1980s and 1990s Nolot took small roles in some of Téchiné's films beginning with Hotel America (1981). He performed in many other films including Long Live Life (1984), Scene of the Crime (1986), Les Innocents (1987) or Nénette and Boni (1996). As an actor, he is best remembered for his role as Charlotte Rampling's lover in François Ozon's Under the Sand (2000). Nolot recounted his restless youth in his unpublished novel The First Step, (Le Premier pas). Nolot and Téchiné converted the story in the screenplay for Téchiné's 1991 film, I don't kiss (J'embrasse pas). Since then Nolot has written stories with strong auto biographic elements. His first play, La matiouette ou l'arrière-pays, grew up out of a night of improvisation with two friends that was recorded on an audio cassette and then transcribed by hand. It was adapted to the screen by Téchiné in 1983.