Between the 1950s and 1960s, Patrick Bourdeaux (his real name) borrowed the name of his mother Mado Maurin, to pursue a solo career, after having been a member of the Maurin family troupe. After some family disputes, he emancipated himself from the tribe by choosing Dewaere, from the marital name of his maternal grandmother De Vaëre, as his artist name.

First inspired by the women in his family, Patrick Dewaere met director Catherine Sigault (better known as Sotha), the first woman who made his heart beat. Born in November 1944, she is one of the founders of the Café de la Gare in Paris, which she runs with a troupe of actors including comedian and companion Romain Bouteille. When they met in 1968 during the Suresnes Cinema Days, the agreement seemed immediate between Dewaere and Sotha.

During this period marked by student protest, the two actors will occupy the cinema, Les 3 Luxembourg, opposite the Carrefour de l’Odéon in Paris. With this complicity, Patrick Dewaere will join the Café de la Gare troupe. A proof of love that will be sealed out of sight by their clandestine marriage in the summer of 1968 in front of their witnesses, comedian Rufus and dancer Christine Haydarat, quoted by Closer.

After breaking up with Romain Bouteille, Sotha moved with Patrick Dewaere to the capital. While he must join the army to perform his compulsory military service, the actor prefers to desert by absorbing a large dose of drugs and coming close to poisoning, as biographer Véronique Lesueur will indicate in her eponymous book (published in 1992 published by Presses de la Cité).

After four years of marriage, Sotha separated from Patrick Dewaere in 1972. Despite their breakup, the two protagonists remained on good terms and worked together. Like the film Along the Fango River, written and directed by Sotha, released in cinemas in 1975. When their divorce was finalized in 1979, Patrick Dewaere had already rebuilt his life with a famous young actress.

After his breakup with Sotha, Patrick Dewaere began a relationship with Miou-Miou who also proved himself on the boards of the Café de la Gare. While she separated from Coluche, another founding member of the theater, the actress forged a romance with the actor in the 1970s. A passion that will intensify on the set of Les Valseuses in 1973.

From their love, the actor couple welcomed their daughter Angèle Herry on August 13, 1974. A year after the birth of their child, the actress and companion of Patrick Dewaere was chosen to play in the film D’amour et d’ fresh water from Jean-Pierre Blanc. While she whispers the name of her companion to the director, to play alongside her, the latter refuses and prefers to offer the role to Julien Clerc.

The singer seduces his partner, so Miou-Miou decides to break up with Patrick Dewaere. Mad with rage, the actor would have waited for him at the exit of the film set in order to do battle with his rival. “He had punched me in the face. Patrick had left at the same time sad, full of misfortunes, pissed off”, confided the former coach of The Voice in Ciné Télé Revue.

Later, the terrible lovers love and tear each other apart in F… comme Fairbanks in 1976. In an interview for the BFMTV site in 2018, Miou-Miou went backstage on the set. “I have a very beautiful memory. We did scenes that we couldn’t do now. We had to shoot, they installed the camera on the hood and we sat with Patrick in the front of the car. He drove, I did the clap and we played. We did that several times and then we went back to the base. Before, we could do that. Once the director told us what to do and we had rehearsed, we left. Now it would be impossible. Probably because of the insurance”.

After his breakup with Miou-Miou, the actor Patrick Dewaere is at its worst. Still marked by his disputes to obtain custody of his eldest daughter, and his divorce from his first wife, he started dating the actress Élisabeth Malvina Chalier (better known under the pseudonym Elsa). The couple welcome their daughter Lola, born December 4, 1979.

But both parents lead sulphurous lives, drowned in their addictions. In 1982, their union broke down and Elsa chose to divorce Patrick Dewaere and joined Coluche in Guadeloupe. A blow for the actor, drawn into a spiral from which he will not emerge unscathed. On July 16, the man put an end to his days in his home in Paris, at the age of 35.

When her father died, Lola Dewaere was raised by her mother. “I said to myself, around 10 or 11 years old, that he perhaps did not love us enough, my mother and me, to choose to go away like that,” she regretted in L’Express in 2016 With an addicted mother, the childhood of the star of the Astrid and Raphaëlle series was not often happy. “My father, a heroin addict, had dragged her into her addictions, which she was then trying to get out of. I saw her stuffing herself with methadone, little pink pills that she peeled off every morning”.

Asked in 2021 in Gala, the actress also mentioned their ties between her and her mother, often weakened over the years. “I remember snippets, rather painful moments when mum came to see me, then left. We were so fused, she and I! (…) Borderline personality, too woman-child, too fragile to assume my education”. 40 years after the death of her father, Lola Dewaere chose to pay tribute to him in the report Patrick Dewaere, my hero, to discover on Friday October 21 on France 5.