Michael Lonsdale, a versatile veteran of French cinema who was known abroad for his villains and antiheroes, including the sad-eyed and subtly psychotic Hugo Drax in the James Bond film “Moonraker” and the mysterious intelligence broker in Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” died on Monday at his home in Paris. The death was confirmed by Olivier Loiseau, his longtime agent. Over his long career, Mr. Lonsdale appeared in nearly 200 films and worked with a Who’s Who of directors, including Mr. Spielberg, François Truffaut, Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Jacques Annaud, and James Ivory, for whom he appeared as Dupont d’Ivry, a French diplomat, in “The Remains of the Day” (1993). In the avant-garde films that he loved, most notably Marguerite Duras’s “India Song” (1975), a gorgeously soapy tragedy that is a touchstone of the era’s European art cinema, Mr. Lonsdale’s shambling presence was a kind of ballast. He played a heartbroken vice consul in thrall to the adulterous wife of an ambassador, played by the equally compelling Delphine Seyrig.

Source: New York Times September 26, 2020 13:18 UTC