French actor Tchéky Karyo, 72, died of cancer on Oct. 31. Karyo was born in Turkey but raised in France, where he started his career onstage, breaking through into movies with the 1982 film La Balance. Besides his many French films and TV shows, Karyo appeared in such international projects as La Femme Nikita, Vincent and Me, 1492, Nostradamus (in the title role), Bad Boys, Operation Dumbo Drop, GoldenEye, Addicted to Love, and The Name of the Rose. On TV, his most famous role was as detective Julien Baptiste in the series The Missing and Baptiste. “I didn’t think of becoming a star, I didn’t know what that meant. My aim was to become a great actor,” he told the London Times. Of his most famous character, Baptiste, he told Hello, “we didn't know [how much he would grow] and I guess with the recognition and the embrace the audience gave to him, they started to think, 'How are we going to continue with it?' And that was really great. The project is really a fantastic journey to do. And there is a lot of work so, yes, it's challenging but I'm always surprised by very creative people, so it's great.”
