Thierry Lhermitte

Origins and early life

Thierry Lhermitte was born at Boulogne-Billancourt on 24 November 1952 to a Jewish mother, Rossanne Bouchara, who died in 2023 and whose paternal line came from the Jewish community of Algiers, documented back to Jacob Bouchara, born in Algiers in 1852, and to his own father Isaac Bouchara, born there in 1817.

Work and career

He has confirmed his Jewish descent publicly, saying in a much quoted reply to Laurent Baffie that in the eyes of Jews and of Nazis he is a Jew, and describing in interviews the antisemitism of his paternal grandmother, who disapproved of her son's marriage to a Jewish woman. He met Christian Clavier, Michel Blanc and Gérard Jugnot at the Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly, and with them and Josiane Balasko, Marie-Anne Chazel and Bruno Moynot founded the café-théâtre troupe Le Splendid in 1974.

The company's stage shows became the films that shaped French comedy for a generation: Les Bronzés and Les Bronzés font du ski, and Le Père Noël est une ordure in 1982, which failed on release and became one of the most quoted French films ever made. He went on to a long career of more than ninety films, in comedy with Un indien dans la ville and Le Dîner de cons, in which he plays the publisher who invites an idiot to dinner, and in drama with Claude Chabrol and Bertrand Tavernier. He is a patron of medical research foundations and has presented science programmes on French radio and television.