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Rochefort was born on 29 April 1930 in Paris, France, to Breton parents. Jean Rochefort was not born in Dinan, but his parents were living there. He was educated at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen.

Rochefort was nineteen years old when he entered the Centre d'Art Dramatique de la rue Blanche. Later he joined the Conservatoire National. After completing his national service in 1953, he worked with the Compagnie Grenier Hussenot as a theatre actor for seven years. There he was noted for his ability to play both drama and comedy. He then became a television and cinema actor, and also worked as director.

After some supporting roles in Cartouche, Captain Fracasse and in Marvelous Angelique, Rochefort played his first big role with Annie Girardot as his wife and Claude Jade as his daughter in Hearth Fires in 1972. In this drama, he starred as a man who leaves his family for ten years before returning. In this film he played at 41 years old a father of adult children (the young Claude Jade was already 23). To appear older, he grew a moustache, his trademark, which he later removed only once, in 1996 for Ridicule.

Four years after Hearth Fires he was the leading star of the midlife crisis comedy Pardon Mon Affaire as a man who risks his married life with Danièle Delorme for an affair with Anny Duperey. Thanks to the success of this film, Rochefort became very popular. In 1972, he starred opposite Pierre Richard as Chief of Counter-Espionage, Louis Toulouse, in the Yves Robert comedy Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire, a role he reprised in the 1974 sequel Le Retour du grand blond, also directed by Robert. In 1998, he starred as "Fernand de Morcerf" opposite Gerard Depardieu in the mini-series Le Comte de Monte Cristo.

In the eighties, he became the narrator of the French version of Welcome to Pooh Corner, replacing Laurie Main. This made him popular with children at the time and Disney hired him to record several audio versions of their classic movies. In the 1990s, he returned to comedy with Les Grands Ducs where he played alongside two other actors of his generation with a similar career, Philippe Noiret and Jean-Pierre Marielle.

He was set to play the lead role in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, after being found as "the perfect Quixote" by director Terry Gilliam. Rochefort learned to speak English just for the part. Unfortunately, amongst other production problems, he began suffering from a herniated disc. Unable to film for months, production was cancelled. A documentary, Lost in La Mancha, was made about the failed production.

In 1960, he married Alexandra Moscwa, with whom he had two children: Marie (1962) and Julien (1965). With actress-filmmaker Nicole Garcia, he also had a son Pierre. Through his second marriage with Françoise Vidal, he had two children, Louise (1990) and Clémence (1992). ...