This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Jean-Laurent Cochet was the most renowned acting teacher in France, and one of the strictest.

“If a student arrived five minutes late to class, they didn’t get into the course,” Maxime d’Aboville, a former student, said in an email. “If we coughed in class,” he added, “we were sent out.”

But Mr. Cochet’s demanding nature led to success. His former students included Gérard Depardieu, Isabelle Huppert and a host of French television, movie and stage stars.

“The Americans had Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio,” said Pierre Delavène, director of the Cochet-Delavène School, which Mr. Cochet founded in 1965. “The French had Jean-Laurent Cochet.”