Little did Michel Serrault know that a modest cabaret act, played to tiny but appreciative audiences on the Paris night club circuit sixty years ago, would lead to his starring role in one of France’s most famous films, La Cage aux Folles (The Birdcage), released in 1978.

Serrault’s cabaret partner was Jean Poiret, and when Poiret wrote La Cage aux Folles as a play, it was a huge success and led immediately to an equally triumphant movie, nominated for three Academy awards. Poiret chose his old friend to create on both stage and screen the character of Albin Mougeotte, the neurotic, near hysterical homosexual who also calls himself Zaza Napoli and owns with his partner, played by Italian Ugo Tognazzi, a transvestite club. Unfortunately it turns out to be located in the basement of their apartment block, unbeknownst to Serrault’s son, who is fastidiously straight and about to be married. The partners’ efforts to keep their relationship and the existence of the club secret from the young couple and the prospective in-laws lead to one hilarious scene after another, brilliantly choreographed by director Edouard Molinaro.

Serrault, who would have been 80 next January, was buried last month at Honfleur, near his holiday home, after a long struggle against cancer. He made more than 135 films and was the popular choice of the best directors in France because of his extraordinary versatility: he played some memorable villains, including an alleged rapist, a child killer in Under Suspicion (1981), and a corrupt banker. The role he was most proud of, though, was in the theatre, as the lead in a 1986 adaptation of Molière’s The Miser. In 2002 he brought the house down, almost literally, when he came on as a clown to celebrate the centenary performance of the famous Winter Circus.

Serrault once explained that what drove him on to accept roles long after many actors would have vanished into dignified retirement was the personal tragedy in his own life. One of his daughters was killed in a car accident. ‘I could not bear to sit at home amongst all the pictures of her,’ he said. Serrault appeared in movies as recently as last year, with a cameo role in Les Enfants du Pays (Hometown Boys), exposing the part played by African soldiers for France in the Second World War.

Although in great pain towards the end of his life, Serrault managed a broad smile when the Honfleur parish priest told him, ‘God has a hard job. Go and make him laugh now.’