Death of actress Chantal Nobel, television star of the 1980s

Actress Chantal Nobel, star of the small screen of the 1980s whose destiny was shattered in full glory by a car accident, died Thursday at the age of 77, her daughter announced to AFP on Tuesday. “My mother passed away peacefully. She remained combative until the end,” one of the actress’s daughters, Anne-Charlotte Julian, told AFP.

Chantal Nobel, born Chantal Bonneau in Rouen on November 23, 1948, became a star thanks to her role in the soap opera “Châteauvallon”, broadcast on Antenne 2 (now France 2) in 1985. The series broke audience records but only had one season due to the serious accident suffered by its main actress who remained seriously disabled.

On the night of Saturday April 27 to Sunday April 28, 1985, after having participated in Michel Drucker’s “Champs-Élysées” show, she was a passenger of Sacha Distel who lost control of his Porsche. The car crashes into a cement pole in a small village in Nièvre.

The singer was only slightly injured but Chantal Nobel, a fan of racing and car rallies (she placed 5th in the Paris-Dakar in the truck category), spent three weeks in a coma.

Funeral planned for Thursday

Before fame, she started in the theater, appearing at age 20 in the hit play Boeing Boeing. She alternated between appearances in the cinema and on television before landing her first major role, an aristocrat in the Russia of the Tsars, in the series “The Light of the Just” (1979).

His car accident forced him to undergo three years of rehabilitation and prevented him from resuming his career. 80% disabled, she sued Sacha Distel, ultimately sentenced to one year in prison for involuntary injuries.

She then married the jeweler Jean-Louis Julian and lived in Ramatuelle (Var), where she died. In 2010 she claimed to have turned the page on her broken career: “for a long time, I was angry, but it’s over”.

The funeral of Chantal Nobel, who died at her home in Ramatuelle, will be held on Thursday, in private, in the church of this town in Var.