- Clovis Cornillac, Hors-la-loi (Outlaws!), France, 1984. Inspired by Coppola’s Outsiders, realisteur Robin Davis, wanted unknowns. He told his casting director Dominque Besnehard: Find me a new James Dean and Natalie Wood. Fifteen of them! Vincent Perez, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Marie Trintignant made “extraordinary tests.” As did Besnehard’s newest discovery… Impressive in a short called Le Voyage à Deauville, Aurignanc lost this lead and proved untracable when sought to test for other roles. He was in prison. For, as he put it, confusing cinema with reality. Next time Besnehard saw him, Aurignac was stealing a play put on by prisoners at the Bois-d’Arcy jail. He was inside for four years (without any actual judgment being passed!), when the casting icon fought for his release and “placed” him in films by Maroun Bagdadi, Catheriene Breillat, Diane Kurys. Encouraged by Besnehard (a friend, never his lover), Aurignac wrote, directed and starred in a film about his prison days, Memoires d’un jeune con, well received (even by Prime Minister Alain Juppé) in 1996 but a box-office flop. Patrick committed suicide the following year. He was 32.
Birth year: 1965Death year: 1997Other name: Casting Calls: 1