Patrick Bauchau Movies
A versatile character actor who maintains a busy schedule in both Europe and the United States,
Patrick Bauchau was born in Brussels, Belgium, on December 6, 1938. His father, Henry Bauchau, was a noted author, psychoanalyst, and philosopher, while his mother was an educator who also helped operate a publishing company. Coming from an intellectual family, it's not surprising that
Bauchau won an academic scholarship to Oxford University, where he received a degree in Modern Languages. In the early '60s,
Bauchau became interested in film, and worked as an assistant to French filmmaker
Eric Rohmer; this led to
Bauchau being cast as Adrien in
Rohmer's 1967 "moral tale,"
La Collectionneuse;
Bauchau and his fellow leading actors
Haydee Politoff and
Daniel Pommereulle were also credited with the film's dialogue. While this got
Bauchau's acting career off to an impressive start, his naturalistic performance left many believing that
Bauchau was simply playing himself; after
Tuset Street (also released in 1967),
Bauchau moved away from acting, as he built furniture and worked for
Salvador Dali, constructing large pillow-like animal sculptures.
In 1980,
Bauchau re-launched his film career in
Robert Kramer's
Guns, and in 1982,
Wim Wenders cast him in the leading role of his drama
Der Stand der Dinge, which finally established his credentials as a working actor. In 1984,
Bauchau made his American film debut in
Alan Rudolph's typically eccentric romantic comedy
Choose Me, and through much of the rest of the decade he worked regularly on both sides of the Atlantic, though he appeared in as many low-budget exploitation efforts as art films. In 1991,
Bauchau scored an impressive role in
Michael Tolkin's superb drama
The Rapture, and four years later the same director gave him a meaty role in the satire
The New Age. In 1996,
Bauchau was cast in the television series Kindred: The Embraced as a patriarch of the living dead; while the series lasted only a few weeks, it did lead to the recurring role of Sydney in another series, The Pretender, which debuted the same year and ran for four seasons.
Bauchau's higher profile in television helped him win notable roles in high-profile films such as
Clear and Present Danger,
The Cell, and
Panic Room, though he's also played notable roles in the independent features
Twin Falls Idaho and
Secretary.
When not busy with acting,
Bauchau lives in Los Angeles, where he is an avid gardener. In his private life, he's married to
Mijanou Bardot, who played a small role in
La Collectionneuse and also happens to be
Brigitte Bardot's sister. They have an adult daughter, Camille. ~ Rovi

- 1980
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The title tells all -- or nearly all -- in the French melodrama Guns. The film concerns a group of disparate types who support themselves by running guns to the Arabs. On the surface, it would seem that these characters are bad guys. In fact, the guns are to be used by a resistance group who hope to continue shipping oil to the West, despite the despotic curbs imposed upon fuel shipments by their leaders. Very little of the film makes sense, though the action highlights are worthwhile. Guns was written and directed by Robert Kramer, who also plays a minor role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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- Starring:
- Patrick Bauchau, Juliet Berto, (more)

- 1971
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Translated as The Lover, this movie is presented in Spanish and tells the tale of passion and conquest in the "jet set". ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi
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- 1967
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- Add La Collectionneuse to Queue
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La Collectionneuse is the third of director Eric Rohmer's "Six contes moraux" (six moral tales), and also the first of the series to attain full feature-length status (each of the first two entries, La Boulangere de Monceau and La Carriere de la Suzanne, ran less than one hour). Patrick Bauchau plays a self-centered young man on summer holiday in the Mediterranean. He finds himself irresistibly attracted to Haydee (Haydee Politoff,) the aloof young woman who shares his St. Tropez villa. Haydee is a sexual libertine, a "collector of men" (hence the film's title), but she appears disinterested in Patrick. For his part, the hero assumes that the girl's promiscuity is deliberately calculated to prompt him to seduce her. Filmed in 1967, La Collectioneuse was released in the US in 1971, by which time the fourth of Rohmer's Six Moral Tales, My Night at Maud's (69), had already debuted in America. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
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- Starring:
- Haydee Politoff, Patrick Bauchau, (more)