French actor and filmmaker. Throughout his career he worked with Luis Buñuel, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jacques Rivette and Luchino Visconti. In parallel, he was linked to various alternative art communities, from Parisian theater-cafés to the Zanzibar Group.
In 1967, he began regularly filming with a 16mm camera a series of films strongly influenced by the American underground movement, all self-financed and made over several years, halfway between lyricism and the personal diary.
Due to his involvement in French May 68, at the age of 28 he was arrested in Rome and imprisoned for 17 months for drug possession, a charge that was dismissed for lack of evidence. He recorded his prison experience in the memoir Quelques messages personnel.
A famous but never rich actor, a key figure in various counterculture movements, he died of liver cancer at age 57.
