European Actors Archives - Page 8 of 29

Simone Signoret

Simone Signoret was one of France’s greatest movie actors and the first French person to win an Oscar for acting – “Room At The Top” in 1959. She was born in Germany but moved to France as a child. Her major French movies include “La Ronde” and “Therese Requin” in 1953 and “Les Diaboliques”. In 1964 she went to Hollywood to make “Ship of Fools” with Oskar Werner, Vivien Leigh and Lee Marvin. Her husband was Yves Montand. She died in 1985.

TCM overview:

An iconic figure in the history of 20th century French cinema, Simone Signoret was an Oscar-winning actress whose sensuous and sensitive performances in such films as “Casque d’Or” (1952), “Les Diaboliques” (1955), “Room at the Top” (1957) and “Ship of Fools” (1965) drew critical acclaim for nearly four decades. She began in bit parts during the 1940s, eventually working her way up to supporting turns as tragic seductresses in “Dédée d’Anvers” (1948), among others. By the 1950s, she was showing exceptional depth in a wide variety of arthouse classics, including “Diaboliques,” an enduring chiller that solidified her screen persona as a complex, even dangerous woman. In 1957, she became the first foreign actress to win an Academy Award for her turn as an unhappy wife in “Room at the Top,” but surprised many by favoring continental productions over Hollywood. The decision was a shrewd one, as it gave her some of her best features, including “Army of Shadows” (1969), “Le Chat” (1971) and “Madame Rosa” (1977). A childhood spent under the shadow of Nazi Germany made her a dedicated supporter of human rights throughout her life, which culminated in the 1985 documentary “Terrorists in Retirement,” about Eastern European Jews who fought in the French Resistance. It would be her final grand accomplishment before her death that year from cancer. Critics and audiences around the world mourned the passing of an actress whose bravery, honesty and commitment to cinema remained of the highest order.

Born Simone Henriette Charlotte Kaminker in Wiesbaden, Germany on March 25, 1921, she was the eldest of three children by André Kaminker, an Army officer and linguist, and his wife, Georgette Signoret. The family later moved to the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where Signoret learned and eventually taught English. As a young woman, she moved with an intellectual, politically informed crowd at the Café de Flore in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter that would have a profound influence on her own commitments to political and social causes. The German occupation of France in 1940 forced Signoret’s father, a Polish-Austrian Jew, to flee the country and join General Charles de Gaulle’s opposition in England. In need of a means to provide for her mother and younger brothers, Signoret began working as a movie extra. Billed with her mother’s maiden name to avoid Nazi scrutiny, she worked steadily in bit roles that frequently hinged on her earthy sensuality – dancers, call girls and the like. In 1944, she caught the attention of director Yves Allegrét, who cast her in her breakout film, “Dédée d’Anvers” (1948) as a prostitute in love with a young Italian soldier. He also became her first husband and father of her only child, future actress Catherine Allegrét. Their union would run its course by the release of their second screen collaboration, “Manèges” (“The Cheat”) (1950), but by then, Signoret had become a star in her own right. She had also forged what would become her most enduring personal relationship with actor Yves Montand, who became her second husband in 1950, as well as her most devoted supporter.

The 1950s were the high point of Signoret’s career and personal life, but also one of her most turbulent decades. She became one of France’s most acclaimed actresses with a series of acclaimed portrayals of women in the grip of turbulent love affairs; in Jacques Becker’s “Casque d’Or” (1952), her underworld moll unwittingly launched a chain of violence in her attempt to seek a loving relationship, while Marcel Carné’s “Thérèse Raquin” (“The Adulteress”) (1953) put her at the center of a love triangle with a thoughtless husband (Jacques Duby) and a handsome truck driver (Raf Vallone). Her most enduring film from this period was undoubtedly “Les Diaboliques” (“Diabolique”) (1955), a harrowing thriller from Henri-Georges Clouzot, with Signoret and Vera Clouzot as the mistress and wife, respectively, of a cruel schoolmaster who became the target of their complex murder scheme. The film’s success established Signoret as one of France’s biggest stars, and she parlayed her fame into drawing attention to various political causes.

With Montand by her side, she openly voiced her opposition to Russia’s involvement in Hungary, the U.S. in Vietnam, and her own country in Algiers. She was also vehemently opposed to the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1953, which spurred her and Montand to star in a French-West German film version of “The Crucible” (1957). For a period, her allegiances prevented her from gaining a visa into the United States, but she and Montand would eventually visit the play’s author, Arthur Miller, in America prior to making the film, during which time Montand had a well-publicized affair with the playwright’s then-wife, Marilyn Monroe. With typical European aplomb, she dismissed the incident, stating that she found no fault in Monroe’s infidelity, as it confirmed Signoret’s own good taste in lovers.

Signoret won the BAFTA for her turn in “The Crucible,” but surpassed that accomplishment two years later with her powerful performance in “Room at the Top” (1959). Cast as an unhappily married older woman who entered into a doomed affair with amoral social climber Laurence Harvey, Signoret claimed not only a second BAFTA but also the Oscar and Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, among other laurels. The wins led to offers of work in Hollywood, but Signoret turned them down, preferring instead to remain a key figure in European films. She worked steadily throughout the 1960s, earning acclaim for turns as the neglected wife of an unfaithful teacher (Laurence Olivier) in “Term of Trial” (1962) and as a suspect in a “perfect murder” case in Costa Gavras’ “The Sleeping Car Murders” (1965) that also featured Montand and her daughter. Signoret earned an Oscar nomination as a drug-addled countess on an ocean liner bound for Nazi Germany in Stanley Kramer’s “Ship of Fools” (1965). The following year, she won an Emmy for “A Small Rebellion,” a 1966 teleplay on “Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre” (NBC, 1963-67).

In the late 1960s, Signoret managed to avoid the pitfalls that awaited many actresses as they entered their late forties. She was no longer playing seductive wantons, but the breadth of her talent allowed her to segue into supporting roles and occasional leads with considerable substance. She received back-to-back BAFTA nominations for Sidney Lumet’s “The Deadly Affair” (1967) and Curtis Harrington’s cult favorite “Games” (1967) as, respectively, a concentration camp survivor with ties to a government official’s suicide and a mysterious woman who disrupted the lives of callous socialites James Caan and Katharine Ross. Haughty critics derided her decision to allow herself to age naturally, but the added years brought gravitas to her later roles, including a French Resistance collaborator in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows” (1969) and an aging wife driven to jealousy by her husband’s (Jean Gabin) adoration of a stray cat in “Le Chat” (1971). The latter earned her a Silver Bear for Best Actress from the Berlin International Film Festival, while “Madame Rosa” (1977) brought her both the Cesar and David di Donatello Awards for her touching performance as an aging madam who forged a maternal relationship with a young Arab orphan. The following year, she published her memoirs, Nostalgia Isn’t What It Used to Be (1978) to considerable acclaim.

Signoret worked steadily in the final decade of her life, earning top billing in Jeanne Moreau’s “The Adolescent” (1979) as a grandmother who provided wisdom and guidance for her love struck granddaughter. The year 1985 saw the completion of “Terrorists in Retirement,” a documentary by Mosco Boucault about Eastern European Jews who aided the Resistance movement during World War II but received no credit for their heroism. Signoret and Montand had supported the film during its lengthy production history, but it remained banned from French television until after Signoret’s death. That same year, Signoret made her debut as a novelist with Adieu Volodia, about Jewish immigrants working in the Paris theatre between the late ’20s and the mid-’40s. The overwhelmingly positive response to the book signaled the beginning of a new phase in Signoret’s career. Sadly, she succumbed to pancreatic cancer on September 30 of that year, bringing to a close a remarkable, well-lived life.

By Paul Gaita

The above TCM overview cal also be accessed online here.

Lili Darvis was born in 1906 in Budapest. She was a major star first in Budapest, then on the German stage with Max Reinhardt’s theatre company during the 1920’s, touring Europe with plays by Goethe, Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Shaw. She received her education at the Budapest Lyceum and made her acting debut at the age of 20 as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet”. In 1926, Lili married the playwright Ferenc Molnár, who wrote several plays for her, including “Olympia” and “Delilah”. The following year, she made her Broadway debut as Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

Lili, who was of Jewish background, fled Europe after the Austrian ‘Anschluss’ in 1938, using her Hungarian passport to escape to Switzerland. Later, on the advice of actor Walter Slezak, she hired a tutor to perfect her English language skills. Though she became known for her fine acting range, she never lost her European accent which limited her to playing women of continental background. In 1944, she became an American citizen and, over the next three decades, had many successes on the New York stage, including a starring role in “Waltz of the Toreadors” (1958) and as Sigmund Freud’s domineering mother Amalie in “The Far Country” (1961). She was nominated for a Tony Award in one of her last roles as Best Supporting or Featured Actress in Lorraine Hansberry’s “Les Blancs”.

On screen, she appeared in the big budget MGM musical Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). Following her husband’s death in 1952, Lili acted increasingly in radio and early television drama. She is fondly remembered as Billy Mumy’s grandmother in “The Twilight Zone” (1959) episode “Long Distance Call” .(as per IMDB)

Conrad Veidt was born in 1893 in Berlin. He has a special place in movie buffs hearts for his roles in “The Cabinet of Dr Caligari” which was made in Germany in 1919 and “Casablanca” which was made in Hollywood in 1942. After a successful career in German silent film, where he was one of the best paid stars of the studio Ufa he left Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. Conrad Veidt moved in the United Kingdom, where he starred in a number of films such as “The Spy in Black” in 1939 with Valerie Hobson, “Contraband” and “The Thief of Bagdad”. He emigratedto the United States around 194 to complete “The Thief of Bagdad” as production of the movie was halted in England due to World War Two. He very quickly established himself as a major player in films made at the Warner Brothers Studio. His other films in the U.S. included “Nazi Agent”, “A Woman’s Face” and “Above Suspicion”, the latter two movies with Joan Crawford. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1943 while playing golf in Los Angeles.

TCM overview:

One of the premiere actors of the German stage and silent screen, Conrad Veidt went on to become a prominent film star in Great Britain prior to his exodus to Hollywood during World War II, where, ironically, he was most often cast as a Nazi. Amidst the turmoil of World War I, Veidt trained with the renowned Max Reinhardt at the Deutches Theater in Berlin, where he grew from bit player to prominent leading man. With his mesmerizing portrayal of the sleepwalking killer in “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920), Veidt achieved true lasting stardom as he continued to work with the greatest directors of the day, including Robert Wiene and F.W. Murnau. John Barrymore lured him out to Hollywood for “The Beloved Rogue” (1927) and director Paul Leni gave him one of his most iconic roles in “The Man Who Laughs” (1928), before the advent of sound prompted the German-speaking actor to return home. Soon, however, the rise of Nazism led Veidt and his Jewish wife to immigrate to England, where he mastered the language and continued his success in such works as “I Was a Spy” (1932) and “Dark Journey” (1937). Having relocated to Hollywood after the Blitz of London, the actor continued to work throughout the war, most memorably as the icy Nazi, Major Strasser in “Casablanca” (1942). Remembered for roles at each end of his professional timeline, Veidt maintained a prolific career in both theater and film on three continents for more than 25 years.

Born Walter Hans Conrad Veidt on Jan. 22, 1893 in Berlin, Germany, he was the son of working class parents Amalie and Phillip, the latter a civil servant. As an adolescent, Conrad attended Hollenzollern secondary school and began harboring dreams of an actor’s life while attending performances at the famed Deutches Theater in Berlin. It was there he began studying acting under the legendary German stage director Max Reinhardt until he was drafted into service with the outbreak of World War I soon after his apprenticeship had begun in 1914. After several months of active duty, Veidt was taken ill with jaundice and pneumonia and pulled out of combat duty. Stationed in the city of Libau, near the Baltic Sea, he found acting work entertaining the frontline troops at theaters organized by Lucie Mannheim, an actress with whom he had begun an intensely romantic relationship back in Berlin. Eventually deemed unfit for service, Veidt was discharged from the Army and returned to Berlin and the Deutches Theater in 1916, where he immediately resumed his acting career.

Having achieved star status on stage at the Deutches Theater under Reinhardt, it came as no surprise when Veidt was inevitably courted by directors and producers in the nascent motion picture industry. Early silent films “Der Weg des Todes” (1916), “Furcht” (1917) and “Der Spion” (“The Spy”) (1917), as well as a brief marriage to cabaret performer Augusta Hall soon followed. As he had on the stage, Veidt quickly set about establishing himself as a talented, dependable screen actor in a variety of roles. He essayed composer Frederic Chopin in “Nocturno der Leibe” (1919), Jules Verne’s Phineas Fogg in “Around the World in 80 Days” (1919) and as one of the first explicitly gay characters ever written for the screen in “Different from the Others” (1919). All of these films, directed by the likes of the great F.W. Murnau, were merely a prelude to his career-making turn as Cesare, the murderous somnambulist in director Robert Wiene’s expressionistic silent horror masterpiece, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920). As successful as his professional life was, the extended periods apart had taken its toll on his marriage, leading to his amicable divorce from Hall. As he continued to work at a furious pace, Veidt married for a second time to Felicitas Radke, prior to reteaming with Wiene for the thriller “The Hands of Orlac” (1924) and portraying Ivan the Terrible in “Waxworks” (1924).

Veidt was enjoying great success as one of Germany’s most popular screen actors, in addition to experiencing the joys of fatherhood, with the arrival of his only child, Viola, when he received an offer he could not refuse. Invited to Hollywood by John Barrymore, Veidt made his U.S. film debut as King Louis XI in “The Beloved Rogue” (1927), starring Barrymore in the title role. Veidt remained in Hollywood for several pictures, including his eponymous turn in “The Man Who Laughs” (1928), a character with a rictus grin, said to have inspired the design of the comic book villain The Joker, more than a decade later. Unfortunately, with his limited English and thick accent, the advent of sound in motion pictures soon led to Veidt’s return to Germany, where his commanding voice only enhanced his stature and popularity. Unfortunately, personal history repeated itself for the actor, when just as his career was once more on the upswing his marriage to his second wife began to crumble. Thankful for any excuse to get away and rethink his situation, Veidt accepted an offer to travel to England, where he made several more films and quickly learned English. The German actor made his English-language debut with “The Congress Dances” (1932), quickly followed by an appearance in “Rome Express” (1932).

Having ended his marriage to Felicitas, Veidt chose to remain in England, where he continued to work in such popular films as “I Was a Spy” (1933) and “Jew Süss” (“Power”) (1934). It was also at this time that he met and married his third wife, Ilona “Lily” Präeger, with whom he stayed for the remainder of his life. Within weeks of his marriage to Lily, who was Jewish, Veidt wisely chose to immigrate to the U.K. as the Nazi party rose to prominence in his homeland. Although not Jewish himself, the actor reportedly scrawled the word “Jude” on his race identification card in a show of solidarity for his beloved new wife. Happier than ever before, Veidt remained in England and eventually became a British citizen in 1938. Films of the period include “Dark Journey” (1937), co-starring Vivien Leigh, and “The Devil is an Empress” (1938). He made his final two British productions under the direction of Michael Powell in “The Spy in Black” (1939) and “Contraband” (1940), before the escalation of World War II prompted the studio to send their star to the relatively safer environs of the United States. And so, in 1940, Veidt made his return to Hollywood.

Veidt quickly made his first Hollywood talkie with the Norma Shearer-Robert Taylor wartime drama “Escape” (1940), cast as a menacing Nazi officer. Regrettably, despite his own personal loathing of the fascist party and all it stood for, Veidt found himself cast almost exclusively as a Nazi throughout the remainder of his career in Hollywood. One notable early exception was the Technicolor fantasy classic “The Thief of Baghdad” (1940). Although production had initially begun in London, it was moved – along with Veidt – to Hollywood for completion after the Blitz. Veidt’s inspired performance as the evil Jaffar proved so influential that it clearly served as an inspiration for the Disney animated adaptation of the tale some 50 years later. Working on such films as “A Woman’s Face” (1941) and the Humphrey Bogart comedic-caper “All Through the Night” (1941), Veidt did his part by sending large portions of his salary back to his adopted country to aid in the British war efforts. He made two more films the following year. The first, “Nazi Agent” (1942), provided Veidt with the rare opportunity to play identical twins – one a calculating Nazi spy, the other, a German expatriate – while the second film would arguably feature the role he would be most widely remembered for by American audiences.

That second feature was “Casablanca” (1942), one of the quintessential films in all of American cinema; it boasted a stellar cast that included Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Claude Rains, Ingrid Bergman, and Bogart as the owner of a nightclub in Vichy-controlled Morocco. Supremely sinister as the calculating Major Strasser, it was ironic that the avowed anti-Nazi would be primarily remembered for a portraying a character whose very raison d’être stood for everything the actor loathed in his former homeland. To his credit, Strasser went on to be regarded as one of film’s all-time classic villains. Veidt took part in one more film after “Casablanca,” the middling espionage thriller “Above Suspicion” (1943), which paired him for the final time with Joan Crawford, as well as Fred MacMurry and Basil Rathbone. Safely away from the wartime dangers of Europe, happy, at last in his third marriage and enjoying a respectable career in American film, Veidt’s life was quite possibly as good as it had ever been – making it all the more tragic when the 50-year-old actor died of a sudden heart attack while playing golf in Los Angeles on April 3, 1943.

By Bryce Coleman

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Sebastian Stan was born in Romania in 1983. When he was twelve he moved to the U.S. His movies include “The Covenant” and “Black Swan”. On television he stars in “Once Upon A Time”. In the Spring of 2013 he starred on Broadway in “Picnic”

TCM overview:

.Some actors are blessed with good looks, and Sebastian Stan was definitely one of those. However, across numerous roles over his career, which began in the early 2000s, he also showed tremendous emotional and physical range, making him more than just a pretty face. He showed poise in his varied roles, whether kicking back with Captain America and Black Widow, dealing with the drama of privileged teenagers, or bringing The Mad Hatter to modern times. Born in Romania in 1982, Stan lived there with his mother until they moved to New York in 1994. He was taken by the stage at a young age, appearing in numerous school productions before eventually attending Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts for acting. While still attending school, Stan got his professional start on “Law & Order” (NBC 1990-2010) in 2003. He also appeared in a few independent films, most notably “Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding” (2004) and “Red Doors” (2005). Graduating from Rutgers, he almost immediately filmed the drama “The Architect” (2006) and the supernatural thriller “The Covenant” (2006). His first breakthrough came with a recurring role on the teen drama “Gossip Girl” (CW 2007-2012), followed by a small role in Jonathan Demme’s family drama “Rachel Getting Married” (2008). He then joined the cast of the short-lived alternate-reality drama “Kings” (NBC 2009). The disappointment of that series’ swift cancellation was tempered by key supporting roles in the critically-acclaimed drama “Black Swan” (2010) and the cult-favorite comedy “Hot Tub Time Machine” (2010). After he appeared as Captain America’s sidekick Bucky Barnes in “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011), Stan co-starred in the Washington D.C.-based miniseries “Political Animals” (USA 2012) and the film “Gone” (2012). He also appeared as The Mad Hatter in several episodes of the fantasy “Once Upon a Time” (ABC 2011- ) before reprising his role as Bucky in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” (2014).

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Bekim Femhiu was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1936. He broke through internationally in 1967 with the film “I Even Met Happy Gypsies”. His movies include “The Adventurers” in 1970, “The Deserter”, “The Last Snows of Spring” and “Black Sunday”. He died in 2010.

His obituary in “The Telegraph”:

Bekim Fehmiu starred on his own side of the Iron Curtain, where he was later respected as one of the few public figures to resist the nationalism that preceded the ethnic wars of the 1990s in the Balkans. As such his death prompted a common outpouring of grief and nostalgia among the peoples of former Yugoslavia, who were united in mourning one of the last icons of their formerly mutual homeland.

Bekim Fehmiu was born on June 1 1936 in Sarajevo, now in Bosnia. He was an ethnic Albanian and his family moved to the Kosovo region, where, as a 20-year-old amateur boxer and manual worker, he was advised to apply to an acting academy because of his good looks.

His big break was the 1967 film I Even Met Happy Gypsies, a subtle portrayal of Roma life which won two awards in Cannes and was nominated for an Oscar.

Known for his macho appearance and mild manner, Fehmiu was then wooed by Western filmmakers and signed a contract with the Academy Award winning producer Dino De Laurentis. For the 1970 Hollywood epicThe Adventurers, co-starring Charles Aznavour and Candice Bergen, he learnt English in three months. By the end of his career he had acted in nine languages, including French, Spanish and Italian.

In 1974 Fehmiu appeared in the tile role The Adventures of Ulysses, with Irene Papas as Penelope, and in John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday (1977) he played a Palestinian terrorist alongside Robert Shaw and Marthe Keller.

The New York Times dubbed him the “Yugoslav heart-throb” for his youthful conquests and acquaintances with the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Ava Gardner. Decades after his last appearance on the screen, readers of a leading Italian women’s magazine voted him one of the ten most attractive men of the 20th century.

Fehmiu’s Hollywood films achieved little critical success, however, and he excelled mainly in European art house cinema as well as in the theatre, which was his natural medium.

It was during a play in 1987 that he suddenly retreated from public life – by walking offstage in the middle of a performance in protest, he said, at the hate-speech of Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian nationalist leader who was later tried for war crimes. Fehmiu never acted or appeared in a public role again.

“The break-up of Yugoslavia, the horrible fratricidal war, the destruction of Vukovar, the bombing of Dubrovnik, the long-running siege of Sarajevo, the war in Kosovo, the bombing of Yugoslavia all made my father withdraw even more,” Fehmiu’s son Uliks said. “He gave up words, the most potent and beautiful tool for an actor, and turned them into silence, into protest.”

Fehmiu interrupted his vow of silence only once, in 2001, when he gave a brief interview to promote his autobiography Brilliant and Terrifying. “I achieved nothing, absolutely nothing in a setting dominated by the riders of the apocalypse and I only went through enormous emotional suffering,” he said.

Despite his international celebrity, Fehmiu was known for his humble personality and for his lifelong support of emerging artists, as well for being a devoted husband and father.

He even left a note apologising to his family after shooting himself in the head in his Belgrade apartment on June 15. Formerly in athletic good health, he had suffered a stroke earlier this year that had left him almost paralysed.

According to his last wish, Bekim Fehmiu’s ashes were scattered across the river Bistrica near his hometown of Prizren in Kosovo, where he used to watch the sunsets as a child. He is survived by his wife, Serbian actress Branka Petric, and their two sons.

The above “The Telegraph” obituary can also be accessed online here.

IMDB entry:

Bekim Fehmiu was born on June 1, 1936 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia. He was an actor, known for I Even Met Happy Gypsies (1967), Black Sunday(1977) and Special Education (1977). He was married to Branka Petric. He died on June 15, 2010 in Belgrade, Serbia. Studied at the Belgrade Film Academy from 1956 to 1960 with Prof. Mata Milosevic. A major star in Yugoslavia and several parts of Europe, Fehmiu won film awards and definite heartthrob status in his native land before venturing out internationally. His American debut in a starring role with a huge, star-studded, international cast backing him up was poorly acted and the epic film a complete misfire. The Adventurers (1970) ruined any chances for Fehmiu to achieve similar stardom in Hollywood.

Lives with his wife, brothers and sisters between Belgrade, Prizren and Pristina. Released an autobiographical book. [May 2001]

Born in Paris, Clémenti studied drama and began his acting career in the theatre. He secured his first minor screen roles in 1960 in Yves Allégret‘s Chien de pique performing alongside Eddie Constantine. Arguably, his most famous role was that of gangster lover of bourgeois prostitute Catherine Deneuve in Belle de jour, the 1967 classic by Luis Buñuel, in whose film La voie lactée he played the Devil.

In 1972, his career was derailed after he was sentenced to prison for allegedly possessing or using drugs. Due to insufficient evidence, Clémenti was released after 17 months; later he penned a book about his time in prison. Throughout his career, he continued to be active in the theatre.

He was also involved with the French underground film movement, directing several of his own films which often featured fellow underground filmmakers and actors. . He went on to direct La Revolution ce n’est qu’un debut, continuons le combat, In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal and Sun.

He died of liver cancer in 1999.

Brian Baxter’s “Guardian” obituary:

The films of the French actor-director Pierre Clémenti, who has died of cancer aged 57, included Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (1962), Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967), and The Milky Way (1969), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Pigsty (1969), and Liliana Cavani’s reworking of Antigone, The Cannibals (1970).

In 1971 he worked with Walerian Borowczyk in Blanche, and, for the decidedly less flakey Hungarian director Miklos Jancso, in The Pacifist, opposite Monica Vitti. His politics were in evidence with these directors, and, more markedly, with the Brazilian Glauber Rocha, who directed him in Cabezas Cortadas (1970). He made two movies for Bernardo Bertolucci. After Partner (1968), he was rewarded with a key role in the director’s masterpiece The Conformist.

Yet the charitable view of Clémenti and his 40-year career would be that he did not realise his potential. The reasons involve his back ground and lack of training, rightwing pressures and post-1970s changes in world cinema which marginalised him and other radicals. An alternative version is that he was not a versatile actor, and, as a director – of four features and some shorts – his interests ended with the experimental and avant-garde. He was an art-house figure, a sexy, disturbing, androgynous presence in some memorable European films made between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. Many of his roles were minor, especially as his looks faded, and he only occasionally acted in mainstream cinema – for example, in the period romp Benjamin (1968).

Clémenti was born in Paris, to an unknown father, and while young, spent time in reform school. His film career began in 1960 with Yves Allegret’s Chien de Pique. Two years later Visconti cast him as Burt Lancaster’s son in The Leopard, and his sultry, full-lipped face won him parts in French and Italian movies. He also featured in a French television series.

His big break came with his role in Belle de Jour, starring Catherine Deneuve, and in 1968 he was reunited with her when, at 26, he starred in Benjamin, as a 17-year-old trying to lose his virginity. “Clémenti indicates adolescent innocence by being loose-limbed and girlish,” wrote Pauline Kael. “It is essential for the boy to suggest the kind of man he will become once he has learned what everyone is so eager to teach him, but Clémenti looks as though he would become a lesbian.”

The period from the making of Belle de Jour was wonderfully productive, but in 1971 Clémenti was imprisoned in Italy on drugs charges. He never seemed to fully recover from the ordeal, but the experience led to a book and a film, New-Old (1978), which he described as “my diary of my life before and after 1973”. He was bitter about the lack of help from the French authorities over the charges, feeling this was a delayed punishment for his support of the 1968 uprising.

In the late 1960s he began work as a director, initially making 16mm experimental shorts, and the psychedelic Visa de Censure (1968). It was 10 years before he made another feature, New-Old, and a further decade before Soleil (1988), described as a song of love and death and stemming from his theatre work. In the same year, he directed A l’Ombre de la Canaille Bleue, which, like the others, only surfaced in a Cinemateque Francaise retrospective of experimental movies.

After his release from prison in 1973, Clémenti worked for Dusan Makavejev, playing a sailor in the outrageous Sweet Movie. A sturdy version of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf (1974) followed, and his leftist credentials earned him a role in the Marxist The Red Poster (1976). Several weak films followed, then he took the lead in Jean-Jacques Andrien’s debut feature, Le Fils d’Amr est Mort (1978), a magical work which nonetheless failed to revive the actor’s career. During the next 20 years, Clémenti worked mainly in Portugal, France and Germany, and had a small part, as Vic, in the independent American director James Toback’s thriller Exposed (1983), with a cast that included Rudolf Nureyev, Bibi Andersson and Harvey Keitel.

Although he worked in the theatre and occasional films, including L’Autrichienne (1989) opposite Ute Lemper and Massacre (1995), by the 1990s his looks had gone and he was memorably described as “a broken dandy” – a description which encompassed his Wildean sense of the extravagant. Oddly, his last film was British, Hideous Kinky (1998), but his role was minor. Ill-health had cut his workload to a minimum.

Clémenti was not a great actor, but he was an incarnation of a period long gone from both cinema and life. It is now replaced with the conformity he could not abide.

Pierre Clémenti, actor, director, born September 28 1942; died December 28 1999

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Kaz Garas was born in Lithuania in 1940. He came to the U.S. when he was nine years of age. He made his debut in the TV series “Seaway” in 1966. He came to the U.K. to make the popular series “Strange Report” in 1969. His films include “The Last Safari” with Stewart Granger in 1967. Fropm the 1970’s onwards most of his work has been on American television.

Bjorn Andresen was born in 1956 in Stockholm, Sweden. His major claim to fame was for his role as ‘the boy’ in the acclaimed “Death in Venice” with Dork Bogarde in 1971.

Nino Castelnuovo was born in 1936 in Italy. His best known role was in “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” opposite Catherine Deneuve in 1964. His other movies include “Rocco and his Brothers” which was directed by Luchino Visconti and “The English Patient”. Nino Castelnuvo died in 2021.

Nino Castelnuvo’s obituary in The Guardian in 2021.

Actor best known for playing Guy Foucher in the French musical film classic The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Nino Castelnuovo and Catherine Deneuve in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 1964. Photograph: Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

Ryan GilbeySun 19 Sep 2021 16.34 BST

The actor Nino Castelnuovo, who has died aged 84, starred in one of the indisputable masterpieces of 1960s French cinema: Jacques Demy’s heartbreaking and visually ravishing musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).

Castelnuovo was tender and compelling as Guy, the handsome mechanic in love with Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve), who works in her mother’s umbrella shop. Their romance is interrupted when Guy is summoned to do his military service in the Algerian war. Immediately after he breaks this news to Geneviève, the tearful couple, filmed from the waist up, are borne smoothly along the street as if on a conveyor belt. The scene suggests their trance-like state of shock while hinting at forces beyond their knowledge.

Geneviève gives birth to Guy’s child while he is away, but when the former lovers meet again six years later, their lives have changed irrevocably. Guy, bruised and disillusioned by his wartime experiences, is no longer so dashing or carefree. Neither of them are single.

The vibrant primary colours of the earlier scenes are thin on the ground, as is the sweethearts’ idealism, but it is also true that they have moved on and matured.

The final scene, set on a snowy night at the Esso garage that Guy now owns, is a perfect marriage of the lyrical and the quotidian. “Is this the saddest happy ending in all of movies, or the happiest sad ending?” wondered the critic Jim Ridley. “The beauty, and profundity, of Demy’s vision is that it’s both.”

Two compositions from the film – I Will Wait For You and Watch What Happens – became popular standards. For the most part, though, Michel Legrand’s score is comprised not of individuated songs but of dialogue that is entirely sung-through, as in opera. (None of the cast members do their own singing; Castelnuovo is dubbed by José Bartel.)

Just as the unremarkable port setting is brought to heightened, shimmering life by Demy’s visual panache, so one of the film’s pleasures is the contrast between the banality and pragmatism of the everyday exchanges, and the lushness of the music that accompanies them.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg formed part of the director’s seaside trilogy, sandwiched between Lola (1961), set in Nantes, and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967). It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, was nominated for five Academy Awards (including best foreign language film), and remains widely adored today. Damien Chazelle, the director of the musical La La Land (2016), called it “the most shattering, transporting work of art I’ve seen in any medium”.

Deneuve’s career took off internationally after the film’s release; Castelnuovo kept working but fared less well. Among his subsequent movies were Edgar G Ulmer’s swansong The Cavern (1964), Vittorio De Sica’s A New World and the spaghetti western Massacre Time, as well as The Creatures, a film by Demy’s wife, Agnès Varda, which also featured Deneuve (all 1966). In 1967, he became a star in Italy with the television series The Betrothed, set in the 17th century. Pope Paul VI, who was apparently a fan of the show, had asked to meet him.

Born in Lecco, Italy, Nino was the son of Emilia Paola (nee Sala), a maid, and Camillo Castelnuovo, who worked in a button factory. He took jobs as a mechanic and a painter while pursuing his interest in gymnastics and dancing. After studying drama at the Piccolo theatre in Milan, he appeared as a mime artist on children’s television before landing a bit part in The Virtuous Bigamist (1956) and his first credited role in the thriller The Facts of Murder (1959).

He starred with Alain Delon in Luchino Visconti’s magnificent drama Rocco and His Brothers, alongside the director Pier Paolo Pasolini in The Hunchback of Rome (both 1960), and with Tony Curtis and Monica Vitti in the medieval caper On My Way to the Crusades, I Met a Girl Who … (1967).

He was in the western-cum-heist movie The 5-Man Army, co-written by Dario Argento and scored by Ennio Morricone, and the erotic drama Camille 2000. In the portmanteau film Love and Anger (1969), he appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s contribution, L’amore.

His work in the 70s and 80s, including the Star Wars rip-off Star Odyssey (1979), was confined largely to home-grown film and television. In the 80s, his profile rose in Italy when he appeared in a television commercial for corn oil, in which he was shown leaping over a fence as evidence of his heartiness even in middle age.

A brief return to international cinema came when Anthony Minghella cast him as an archaeologist in the Oscar-winning romantic epic The English Patient (1996). He played an unscrupulous judge in the Italian television series Tuscan Passion, which ran from 2013 to 2015, and his last credit was in the TV movie The Legacy Run (2016), a crime drama set in the world of sport.

He is survived by his wife, Maria Cristina Di Nicola, and a son, Lorenzo, from a previous relationship with the actor Danila Trebbi.

Nino (Francesco) Castelnuovo, actor, born 28 October 1936; died 6 September 2021