- Georges Poulouly, Ascenseur pour l’echafaud (UK: Lift to the Scaffold; US: Frantic), France, 1957. For the punk killer in his first feature, new French realisateur Louis Malle looked over the similarly new young turks – Frey, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Richard Bohringer, Larent Terzieff. However, when shooting started on September 23, it was with the ex-child star of René Clément’s 1951 classic, Jeux interdits/Forbidden Games. Like having Shirley Temple play Lizzie Borden.
- Claude Rich, Ce Soir ou jamais (Tonight or Never), France, 1960. But not Sami Frey and Marie-José Nat or never… Réalisateur and co-scenarist Michel Deville dropped his first choice for the trendier, more New Wave-ish Claude Rich and Anna Karina – as the playwright and his actress lover. And what happens when she does not get a role in his new play.
- Jacques Perrin, La Ragazza con la valigia (UK/US: The Girl With A Suitcase), Italy-France, 1961. New Italian director Valerio Zurlini had heard of Frey and went to check him out in a Paris play… only to be more taken with Perrin. He became Claudia Cardinale’s co-star, Zurlini’s friend and producer of his Il deserto dei Tartari, 1976.
- Jean Sorel Aspern, Portugal-France, 1985. “I wanted somebody who would look vain, a fading beauty, weak and selfish.” Negative qualities but that’s how director Eduardo de Gregorio’s pictured the narrator of the Henry James novel, The Aspern Papers. His French co-producer wanted Frey… “No, too Parisian, whereas Sorel [often likened to such teak as Dana Andrews or Robert Wagnert] looks from nowhere… and gave a much more solid performance than people tend to think. It’s a very ungrateful part and I’m glad I chose him.”
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 4