Michel Serrault, a prolific French actor who won international renown as an over-emotional drag queen in the 1978 comedy La Cage Aux Folles, has died after a long illness. He was 79.

One of the great names of French cinema, Serrault made 135 films in a career covering more than 50 years and shone in straight roles as well as the comedy for which he was perhaps better known.

He worked with some of France’s biggest stars, including Alain Delon and Jeanne Moreau, and many of its best directors, such as Jean-Pierre Mocky and Claude Chabrol.

La Cage aux Folles was adapted from a successful stage play about a homosexual couple who try to hide their relationship - and their ownership of a transvestite club in their basement - when one of their sons announces that he is getting married.

Serrault was born in Brunoy, a small town just south of Paris, on January 24, 1928. He grew up in a Christian family and as a teenager even entered a seminary to study for the priesthood. In the end, it was his love of the theatre that won out, although he never abandoned his faith.

The actor started in theatre in 1948 before switching to the cabaret scene in Paris. It was there that he first worked with Jean Poiret, the pair developing a cabaret act together that was a success in some of the city’s top theatres.

His cinema career began in 1954 and while he found regular work, including supporting roles in classics such as Henri-Georges’ Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques, he was not yet a star.

It was a stage hit that brought him one of his biggest screen successes. La Cage aux Folles was a farce written by Serrault's old friend and collaborator Poiret. It was a massive hit in Paris and when Serrault repeated his stage role for the film version, it too proved an international success.

Serrault’s performance as the hysterical drag performer opposite the Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi was for many the key to the film’s success. The film was nominated for three Oscars and won Serrault the first of three Cesars, the French equivalent. (The Birdcage, a 1996 US remake, starred Robin Williams in Serrault’s role.)

Not all Serrault’s film and theatre roles were comic. He played a suspected child killer interrogated by Lino Ventura’s inspector in Claude Miller’s 1981 claustrophobic Garde a Vue (also known as Under Suspicion). On stage, he took the demanding title role in a 1986 production of Moliere’s The Miser.

While he worked with some of France’s top directors, he never believed in leaving all the work to them. “If you haven’t got the inner intention, the words don’t mean anything,” he said in one interview.“I want to be a communicator, a messenger. I am against actors who see themselves as ’humble servants of the auteur’."

Serrault was married and had two daughters, one of whom died in a car crash in 1977. He died at his home in Normandy, northern France.

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