British-French actor Michael Lonsdale, who was most widely recognised for playing the villain opposite James Bond in ‘Moonraker’, died on Monday aged 89.
Bilingual Lonsdale had a storied film and theatre career, notching up more than 200 roles in both French and English over the course of six-decades.
As well as appearing as 007’s nemesis Hugo Drax in the Bond classic, Lonsdale also played the roles of detective Claude Lebel in The Day of the Jackal, and M Dupont d’Ivry in The Remains of the Day.
Despite these prominent parts in iconic films perhaps the highlight of his career came when he played the role of a Trappist monk in Des hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men) in 2010.
The film is based on true events that took place during the Algerian civil war in the 1990s and it tells the story of seven French monks who were murdered after being kidnapped from their monastery. Lonsdale won his first and only Cesar award – the French version of the Oscars – for his part in the film.
The actor was born to a French mother and an English father in Paris in 1931. He died at his home in the French capital on Monday.
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