Bertrand Cantat

Bertrand Cantat (born 5 March 1964) is a French musician and formerly the frontman of rock band Noir Désir. In 2003, he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter ("murder with indirect intent" (dolus eventualis)) of French actress Marie Trintignant. He returned to Noir Désir after his release from prison in 2007, playing with the group until it disbanded in 2010.

Cantat was born in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques. The son of a Navy officer, he spent his childhood in Le Havre. His family moved when he was an adolescent to Bordeaux and at the lycée Saint-Genès he met Denis Barthe, Serge Teyssot-Gay, and Frédéric Vidalenc, who would soon become members of his band.

At the height of Noir Désir's success in the 1990s, Cantat was a prominent figure in French music. Bertrand Cantat was notably renowned for his poetic text and his powerful interpretrations. He was often compared to Jim Morrison for his scenic charisma.

In 1997 Cantat married Krisztina Rády, an arts director of Hungarian descent, with whom he had two children; Milo, born in 1998, and Alice, born in 2003.

In 2003, Cantat began an affair with French actress Marie Trintignant. On July 26 of that year, Cantat and Trintignant got in a fight in a hotel room in Vilnius, Lithuania, following a dispute over a text message. Seven hours later, Trintignant’s brother called emergency services to go to the couple’s Lithuanian hotel room, as Trintignant had slipped into a deep coma. She died of swelling to the brain several days later in hospital. The postmortem suggested that Cantat had inflicted 19 blows to Trintignant's head, causing irreversible brain damage. In court, Cantat claimed he "slapped" Trintignant four times before putting her to bed. He claimed he had flown into a jealous rage after she received a text message from her ex-husband. Trintignant was 41 at the time of her death, and left four young sons. French medical experts at the hearing confirmed Cantat's claim regarding the slapping as well as his claim that he could not tell that Trintignant was dying. His house was burned down in Moustey. His spouse and his two children initially were supposed to be in the house at that time, but were in Bordeaux instead.

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