I’ve never seen most of his movies. Not going to lie—I’ve never heard of most of his movies. Philippe Noiret was, however, a French “Hey, It’s That Guy!” I literally had the experience this week; I was watching Zazie Dans le Métro for TradeFest, and there he was as Oncle Gabriel. It was only the second role for which he was credited, but he still looked pretty much the way he would look for the next forty-five years.

I’m not going to lie; many of his films look appalling. Every time I scroll through the list, I get hung up on something called Don’t Touch the White Woman! There’s no way that’s not racist, given the title and that it was made in 1974. On the other hand, he was in Topaz and Cinema Paradiso and Il Postino, and that must balance out some of the bad. Basically, he seems to have been a go-to casting choice for schlubby middle-aged French guys for most of his career.

I’m frankly always happy when I recognize actors in foreign films who aren’t, like, Jackie Chan or Antonio Banderas or other people with crossover appeal. Noiret wasn’t Gerard Depardieu (whose crossover appeal is bewildering to me anyway); I don’t think most Americans knew who he was, since most of the films he did, even the ones Americans have much chance at all of knowing, were still in French or Italian or something. It makes me feel as though I’m really exploring cinema outside my own boundaries when I see his films and recognize him. He’s a welcoming presence, which is often enough what his character does as well.

His career as a movie actor was apparently as much a surprise to him as anyone else. He said that French actors of his generation didn’t want to be movie stars; they wanted to act on the stage. Which he also continued to do, and it’s perhaps true that he was never a movie star in the purest sense of the term. He certainly wasn’t Maurice Chevalier, for all his first movie role was an uncredited bit part in a not-musical film of Gigi, before the musical was written. On the other hand, were I a French director from the ’60s through a mere eleven years ago, when he died, I probably would have cast him in the role of the avuncular figure who aids Our Hero in whatever.

Every nation has its Hey, It’s That Guys! Noiret was one of France’s. And who knows; perhaps in France, he’s better known and my description of him feels off and maybe even a little insulting. I wouldn’t know; I don’t talk to a lot of French film buffs. Still, there are doubtless worse people to cast as schlubby middle-aged French guys, and while he never exactly lit up the screen, I feel as though he tended to make the movies he was in a bit warmer, and that’s not nothing.