Unfavorable Impressions: The Tense Relationship Between the Director of Seven Years in Tibet and an Oscar-Winning Actor

A director with an impressive career

If you have loved cinema for at least a few years, you probably know Jean-Jacques Annaud. Born October 1, 1943, this 80-year-old gentleman is today considered one of the greatest French directors and screenwriters. In several decades of career, he has had the opportunity to create some of the most significant films of recent years such as The Name of the Rose, The Bear, Seven years in Tibet, Two brothersor more recently Notre Dame is burning. As such, he had the opportunity to supervise a very large number of different actors and actresses, including some internationally known faces such as Brad Pitt or Sean Connery to name a few.

On the occasion of the release of his masterpiece The Name of the Rose in UHD and Blu-ray, Jean-Jacques Annaud recently gave a very long interview to journalists from Les Années Laser magazine. He was thus able to look back on his entire impressive career, and on his experience with Sean Connery:

Everyone warned me that Sean Connery was an impossible and extremely difficult character. It was actually an absolute dream and I got along wonderfully with him.

If he obviously greatly appreciated his time spent with the actor who already played James Bond in the cinema, he did not have the same experience with all the actors who played in The Name of the Rose.

This Oscar-winning actor was allegedly undrinkable during filming

In case you've never seen The Name of the Rosethis film released in 1986 is a cinematographic adaptation of the famous novel of the same name byUmberto Eco. It is a medieval drama set in the year 1327 in a Benedictine abbey in northern Italy. After the strange deaths of several monks, the local population only thinks of an intervention from the Devil himself. The abbey then brought together certain Franciscans and representatives of the Pope to carry out the investigation. Among them, we find in particular the character played by Sean Connery (William of Baskerville) and the one played by F. Murray Abraham (Inquisitor Bernardo Gui). Unlike Sean Connery, this last actor was very difficult to live with according to Jean-Jacques Annaud:

What I remember from this film is the terrible character, fundamentally wicked and haughty, of F. Murray Abraham, who had taken a difficult time since his Oscar for Amadeus.

It must be said that this is not the first time that the director has spoken of F. Murray Abraham in this way. L'last year, for example, he shared an anecdote which drives the point home even further:

My only bad acting memory throughout my career, and I've directed, I think, thousands of actors, was instead F. Murray Abraham, who played the Inquisitor. He was terrible, not so much to me, but more to Sean.

Still according to him, the Oscar-winning actor did not hesitate to use this award to feel superior to others. He also had a habit of arriving late on the film set, until the last day when he showed up at noon instead of 7 a.m. as he should have done. At any rate, this behavior never really stopped F. Murray Abraham from continuing his career since he starred in dozens of films even after Amadeus and The Name of the Rose. However, he did not win another Oscar or be nominated for another equivalent award, while Sean Connery won an Oscar two years later for his role in The Untouchables.