Thierry Lhermitte
Thierry Lhermitte is an actor, born 1952.
Le Splendid came first: a comedy troupe he founded in the 1970s with Christian Clavier, Gerard Jugnot and Michel Blanc among others, which adapted its own stage hits into films and scored some of the biggest French comedy successes of its era. Those hits are all on this page under their English release titles. Les Bronzes and its ski sequel appear as French Fried Vacation and French Fried Vacation 2, with Lhermitte as Robert "Popeye" Lespinasse in both and again in the 2006 reunion, while Le Pere Noel est une ordure is listed as Santa Claus Is a Stinker.
He was cast as the handsome one, and the interesting part of the career is what directors eventually learned to do with that. The face is smooth, confident and faintly pleased with itself, and by the late 1990s it was being used as a weapon. In The Dinner Game he is Pierre Brochant, a rich Parisian who invites an idiot to dinner for his friends' entertainment, and the comedy depends entirely on the audience wanting him punished for it. In The Closet he plays a company's director of public relations. In The French Minister he plays a foreign minister who never stops talking or moving. The vanity is the instrument.
He has worked continuously since, in Little Indian, Big City, in Le Divorce, in the Open Season comedies of the 2020s, and as the voice of Panoramix in an animated Asterix series.
Movies (29)
- 1001 Nights (1990)
- De Gaulle: The Sovereign Edge (2026)
- Going Places (1974)
- An American Werewolf in Paris (1997)
- Open Season 2 (2025)
- Le Divorce (2003)
- The Dinner Game (1998)
- The Closet (2001)
- Open Season (2023)
- Dead Tired (1994)
- Marquise (1997)
- Les collègues (1999)
- French Fried Vacation (1978)
- Santa Claus Is a Stinker (1982)
- Mauvaise Pioche (2026)
- French Fried Vacation 2 (1979)
- French Fried Vacations 3: Friends Forever (2006)
- My New Partner (1984)
- Do You Do You Saint-Tropez (2021)
- Last Summer in Tangiers (1987)
- Little Indian, Big City (1994)
- L'Américain (2004)
- Gramps Is in the Resistance (1983)
- The French Minister (2013)
- Speaking of the Devil (1991)
- The Jackpot! (1991)
- The Professional Secrets of Dr. Apfelgluck (1991)
- The Professional Secrets of Dr. Apfelgluck (1991)
- The Lady Banker (1980)
TV (5)
Where to start with Thierry Lhermitte
For a first encounter, take The Dinner Game, which is also simply the best film here: one apartment, two men, and a script that keeps tightening. Brochant is the role that made his particular brand of smugness famous outside France.
For the troupe comedies that made him a star at home, French Fried Vacation and French Fried Vacation 2 are the essential pair, and Santa Claus Is a Stinker is the cruellest and funniest of them, though its humour has aged into something startling. The Closet is the other Francis Veber farce worth your time. The French Minister is the sharpest recent thing he has done, a political farce with him at full volume. My New Partner is the 1980s cop comedy, and Little Indian, Big City is the enormous domestic hit that has travelled very poorly.