- In the mid-1950s, Garcin made his big screen debut, and ten years later he landed his first leading role. Alongside Catherine Deneuve and Philippe Noiret, he played in Jean-Paul Rappeneau's "La vie de chateau".
- Between 1970 and 1981, he acted in several plays broadcast on the television in the program 'Au théâtre ce soir'.
- Of Dutch origin but born in Belgium, Henri Garcin, real name Anton Albers, came to Paris in 1950 at the age of 22.
- Bilingual, he was also present in Dutch-language and Flemish productions, for example, in 1996, in De Jurk (The Dress) by Alex van Warmerdam, or Koko Flanel by Stijn Coninx.
- From 1965 to 1995, he played with success roles from plays written by G.B. Shaw, Pirandello, Strindberg, Albee, Ayckbourn, Oscar Wilde, Obaldia, Guitry, Poiret...
- He appeared in a number of "dramas" on television, including the 333 episodes of Maguy, for eight consecutive years (1985-1993).
- In 1964, he enjoyed success at the Théâtre La Bruyère, where he played alongside Monique Tarbès and Romain Bouteille, for 250 performances, L'Échappée belle.
- He had a great success with Saunders, in his play 'The next time I will sing it to you' (1966) at the Antoine Theater, with Delphine Seyrig, Claude Piéplu, Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort, and with Jean-Claude Carrière in L'Aide-mémoire ( 1968) created in duo with Delphine Seyrig at the Théâtre de l'Atelier.
- He has starred in many films and plays, TV movies and TV series.
- Very quick after he arrived in Paris his show toured the Parisian cabarets, where he met the "beginners" of the time: Jacques Brel (they spoke to each other in Flemish because others couldn't or shouldn't understand what they were talking about), Barbara, Serge Gainsbourg, Georges Moustaki, Jean Poiret and Michel Serrault..
- Sporadically, Garcin was seen in a Hollywood production. He played the president in the 2006 remake of The Pink Panther.
- As the child of two Dutch parents who moved to Belgium after the First World War, where his father started a margarine factory, Albers felt like a stranger in Flanders and in the Netherlands.
- He also worked with more experimental directors, such as Marguerite Duras (Détruire, dit-elle, 1969) and Agnès Varda (in her 100-year cinema kaleidoscope Les cent en une nuits de Simon Cinéma).
- The stage was the actor's first love. While Garcin took on serious roles on the French stage, he was often caught up in the more light and comical genre in French feature film.
- Garcin really became known to the French public in his role as a family friend and neighbor in the French sitcom Maguy: 333 episodes between 1985 and 1992. 'Eight years in a cheerful prison', is how Garcin once described this artistically not too challenging position.
- It was not until the mid-1980s that the actor anchored himself in the Dutch film canon as Abel's stiff father in the feature film debut 'Abel' of Alex van Warmerdam, his first film role in his own language area.
- It was director Frans Weisz who 'discovered' Garcin for Dutch movies, and recommended him to Alex Van Warmerdam. After the movie Abel, Garcin became a permanent fixture in the oeuvre of the Dutch filmmaker, with appearances in De Noorderlingen, De Jurk, Grimm, Schneider vs Bax. Never a leading role, his Dutch was not flexible enough for that, Garcin said innnnnn2021 when the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant visited him in his hometown of Paris.
- Garcin remained active in French cinema until his nineties: he played his last supporting role in the 2019 comedy La Sainte Famille.
- Already quite old, the actor played a striking physical father role in a Dutch feature film, as the decrepit farmer banished 'upstairs' by his son in Boven het stil (2013). It was Nanouk Leopold's film adaptation of the novel by Gerbrand Bakker.
- Born as Anton Albers, the son of a wealthy Dutch industrialist enrolled in a private drama school and promptly coined his new stage name.
- Actor 'fétiche', that's what the French called it: he was director Van Warmerdam's 'lucky actor'.
- In 1989 he was nominated for the Molière, France's top theater award, in the Best Supporting Actor category for his performance in a production of Alan Ayckbourn's Just Between Ourselves.
- In 2018, Garcin published his autobiography Longtemps, je me suis couché tard.
- A play he wrote, entitled "L'Échappée belle" was successfully performed under his direction in 1964 at the Théâtre La Bruyère in Paris.
- Henri Garcin lived in Paris and had a daughter, the restorer Géraldine Albers (born1954).
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