In the film *Beau Travail* (1999), the oldest cast member at the time of filming was **Michel Subor**, who played the role of **Commandant Bruno Forestier**.
### **Specific Details:**
* **Age:** Born on February 2, 1935, Michel Subor was **64 years old** during the filming of *Beau Travail* (which took place in Djibouti and France between late 1998 and early 1999). He was the senior member of a cast largely composed of much younger men, many of whom were in their late teens to 30s (e.g., Denis Lavant was 37–38, and Grégoire Colin was 23–24).
* **Role:** Subor played **Commandant Bruno Forestier**, the commanding officer of the French Foreign Legion outpost in Djibouti. His character is the object of intense, repressed admiration and eventually destructive jealousy from the film's protagonist, Adjudant-Chef Galoup (Denis Lavant).
* **Meta-Cinematic Significance:** The role of Bruno Forestier was a deliberate **self-reference** by director Claire Denis. Michel Subor had previously played a character with the exact same name, **Bruno Forestier**, 37 years earlier in Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic ***Le Petit Soldat*** (filmed in 1960, released in 1963). In Godard's film, Forestier was a young army deserter; in *Beau Travail*, Denis presents him as a weathered, veteran commander whose "aged, craggy face" (as described by critics) serves as a bridge between the historical legacy of the Algerian War and the contemporary, ritualized life of the Legion.
* **Runner-up:** The next oldest credited member of the principal cast was likely **Gianfranco Poddighe**, an Italian painter and sculptor who played one of the legionnaires and was born in **1945** (making him approximately 53–54 at the time). Most other legionnaires, such as Bernardo Montet (born 1957, age 41–42), were significantly younger than Subor.