Francis Girod

Director, screenwriter

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

French director and screenwriter Francis Girod, whose films used faces like Catherine Deneuve and Romy Schneider, died Nov. 19 while filming in Bordeaux. He was 62.

Girod, making a television movie in the southwestern wine capital, died in his hotel of a heart attack.

President Jacques Chirac praised Girod's "singular regard in which acuity and irony were allied with sensitivity, emotion and a certain ferocity."

Girod gave "some of the best roles in French cinema to the best actors," Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said.

After briefly working as a broadcast journalist in the 1960s, Girod learned the movie trade at the side of director Jean-Pierre Mocky and Roger Vadim. He made his first movie, "Le Trio Infernal," in 1974 with Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider.

Top French stars consistently showed up in his movies: Gerard Depardieu in "Rene la Canne," 1975; Romy Schneider again in "La Banquiere" (The Banker), 1980; and Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Louis Trintignant in "Le Bon Plaisir" (The Pleasure) in 1984.

His latest movie, "Un Ami Parfait" (A Perfect Friend), about a journalist struck by amnesia, came out in April.