Tchéky Karyo (1953-2025)

[domino harvey]

Tchéky Karyo

[Matt]

How many people could say they worked with both Eric Rohmer and Michael Bay? Chantal Akerman and Stephen Hopkins? He might not have been a star, but he was one of the most enjoyable "that guy" actors of his generation.

[hearthesilence]

I always wonder how many actors like this pulled "I didn't do this shit with [insert name of legendary auteur]!" just to give a not-so-celebrated director a good ribbing. When Norman Lloyd was on Trainwreck, he occasionally would get lines thrown to him by Judd Apatow (who's known to improvise lines for actors on-set, like he's trying out jokes), and one of them was something like "wipe my ass" but much cruder. Lloyd asked Method Man for confirmation just to make sure he heard right, and apparently his direct response to Apatow was "I did Shakespeare with Orson Welles."

[beamish14]

How many people could say they worked with both Eric Rohmer and Michael Bay? Chantal Akerman and Stephen Hopkins? He might not have been a star, but he was one of the most enjoyable "that guy" actors of his generation.

He was fantastic opposite Bart the Bear in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Bear

[Aunt Peg]

The film I most associate with Tchéky Karyo is John Hillcoat's misfire To Have & to Hold (1996) with Rachel Griffiths.

And I only saw Dobermann (1997) for the first time the other week because it was part of Umbrella's second box set of French New Extremity Collection and whilst I found the film underwhelming he was a very effective bad guy.

Also, I'm really bad with names and for decades I've referred to Tchéky Karyo as that 'French actor with the Japanese name'.

He was very much a chameleon actor who disappeared into whatever role he was playing.

[GaryC]

He also had a latterday TV lead role, in the BBC serials The Missing (both series) and its spin off Baptiste (also two series, named after his character).

He was Turkish by birth, and was fluent in that language as well as Greek, French and English. The first film I saw him in would have been La balance (1982, which I haven't seen in decades) and then Rohmer's Full Moon in Paris.

[colinr0380]

He was also in that 2019 TV series remake of The Name of the Rose, with Rupert Everett and John Turturro.

How many people could say they worked with both Eric Rohmer and Michael Bay? Chantal Akerman and Stephen Hopkins? He might not have been a star, but he was one of the most enjoyable "that guy" actors of his generation.

Or Ridley Scott (1492: Conquest of Paradise), Neil Jordan (in Jordan's remake of Bob le Flambeur, The Good Thief) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet (A Very Long Engagement)!

Or played both Vincent Van Gogh and Nostradamus! - Nostradamus was kind of his big push as a leading actor in an epic historical film tapping into end of the world Millennial anxieties, but it kind of failed to work, and fell into obscurity once all of the predictions failed to materialise! Luckily director Roger Christian went on to the much more grounded in literature Battlefield: Earth film! (However I would like to re-visit it some time)

He was a big collaborator with Luc Besson, appearing as the mentor in La femme Nikita and then turning up in The Messenger: Joan of Arc. Plus he appears in Jane Birkin's only theatrical feature, the ensemble drama Boxes! And the only theatrical film by videogame producer Chris Roberts - his film version of his Wing Commander game (which would be a shoe-in for an Arrow edition!) - who is now in the midst of a seemingly endless crowdfunder for his Star Citizen game.

In more commercial fare, he turns up as the baddie in Christophe Gans' live action adaptation of the manga Crying Freeman (another one I would be happy if Arrow picked up!) and in the Paris-set Jet Li film Kiss of the Dragon (against star of the Nikita remake, Bridget Fonda!), and he's one of the expendable team of scientists in post-Armageddon-styled sci-fi film The Core!

[domino harvey]

And I only saw Dobermann (1997) for the first time the other week because it was part of Umbrella's second box set of French New Extremity Collection and whilst I found the film underwhelming he was a very effective bad guy.

Unfortunately this was the first film to come to mind for me too. If nothing else, his exit is impossible to forget

[Mr Sausage]

His exit in Kiss of the Dragon is similarly hard to forget. I think that was my first exposure to Karyo, back in high school. He was an effective villain. But these days I'm more impressed with his supporting role in La Femme Nikita. For a big, loud action movie full of equally loud performances, Karyo plays his role so quietly, even gently, masking his character's emotions by muting them. It says something that his performance stood out to me, whereas Gabriel Byrne in Point of No Return made so little of an impression that I just now had to look up who even played the character.

[diamonds]

There's a later film of Karyo's I think very highly of, Caroline Deruas's Daydreams (2016). Karyo has a supporting role as a successful writer who worries he may be over the hill, leading to some jealousy and resentment over his younger wife's own ascendant writing career. Reading of his death brought to mind Deruas's words about working with him, which I think make for a fitting tribute:

Tchéky is a figure from my teenage years. For me, he was the adventurer in L’Ours, the French Harrison Ford. I love trying to get through that male shell of being unmovable and impenetrable. Tchéky immediately grasped the complexity of the character, and I think that’s what excited him. He also understood how deeply I loved his character and how deeply, beyond his contradictions, I wanted him to be lovable. I wanted him to be understood, or it would all be pointless. Tchéky is an immense actor, a master of nuance and hugely experienced. I was blown away when I realized that every note, every direction I had given him, had made it into his performance. Every little thing. That was extraordinary.

He also possesses supreme finesse. The scene when he breaks down in tears is a gift to me. Seeing a man cry is very rare, very intimate, and I find it very moving. For so long, I thought that men didn’t cry.

[Grand Wazoo]

I always remember Tchéky Karyo for playing the French soldier character in The Patriot, one of my favorite stupid movies of all time.

[JSC]

I think the first film I saw Karyo in was La femme Nikita. Great actor.

[John Cope]

And training Peter Coyote in knife fighting in Exposure (aka High Art/A Grande Arte).

[feihong]

I don't know that anyone else likes this movie so much, but I love the way he played the Rogozhin role in Zulawski's L'Amour Braque. I'm not sure anyone lost their mind in a Zulawski movie quite as completely as Karyo.