Canadian actor Michael Sarrazin dies at 70 after battle with cancer
Posted April 18, 2011 6:13 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MONTREAL – Quebec born Michael Sarrazin had giant haunting eyes and a quiet presence on screen that spoke volumes. He was 70 and died in Montreal on Sunday surrounded by family after a battle with cancer.
He played opposite a lot of great stars and he was Paul Newman’s hippie half brother in “Sometimes a Great Notion.”
He worked with George C. Scott in “The Flim-Flam Man” as a fellow con artist. He was best remembered for his role opposite Jane Fonda in “They Shoot Horses Don’t They.”
For 14 years he was in a relationship with actress Jacqueline Bisset, whom he met in the 1968 film, The Sweet Ride and The Pursuit of Happiness.
Sarrazin also appeared in The Flim-Flam Man, Joshua Then and Now, and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “The Quickening”. He hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live on April 15, 1978.
Michael Oscars, his Toronto-based agent and friend of 27 years, said the actor’s daughters, Catherine and Michelle, were at his side when he died.
Oscars said Sarrazin was a gifted conversationalist who had an amazing collection of friends.
“He had a gentleness and a sensibility about him that was very distinct and unique,” he said.
“A lot of people always said that he had the most soulful eyes of any actor in Hollywood.”
