19th-century French male actors

Pierre Frédéric Magnier (February 22, 1869 - October 15, 1959) was a French actor who began on the stage in the 1890s and became a prominent silent film actor in France. He was the second actor to portray Cyrano de Bergerac in any film in 1925. He continued acting until the 1950s. He is most remembered for the role of the General in Jean Renoir's La règle du jeu, where he has one of the films more poignant quotes (and the film's final line) when he praises Marcel Dalio's character as one of "a vanishing breed."

Eugène-Charles-Joseph Silvain (17 June 1851 - 21 August 1930) was a French stage actor, pensionnaire of the Comédie française, sociétaire then dean of the compagny from 1878 to 1928.

Étienne Marin Mélingue (1807–1875) was a French actor, sculptor and painter.
He was born in Caen, the son of a volunteer of 1792, He early went to Paris and obtained work as a sculptor on the church of the Madeleine, but his passion for the stage soon led him to join a strolling company of comedians. Finally chance gave him an opportunity to show his talents, and at the Porte Saint Martin he became the popular interpreter of romantic drama of the type popularized by Alexandre Dumas, père.One of his greatest successes was as Benvenuto Cellini, in which he displayed his ability both as an actor and as a sculptor, really modelling before the eyes of the audience a statue of Hebe. He sent a number of statuettes to the various exhibitions, notably one of Gilbert Louis Duprez as William Tell. Mélingue's wife, Théodorine Thiesset (1813–1886), was the actress selected by Victor Hugo to create the part of Guanhumara in Burgraves at the Comédie-Française, where she remained ten years. He created the part of D'Artagnan in The Youth of The Musketeers and The Musketeer (a dramatization of 20 Years After by Dumas) and also the part of Lagardere in Feval and Anciet-Bourgeois's Hunchback.

(Hyppolyte) Louis Alexandre Dechet (alternatively, spelled Dechez; Lyon, 20 January 1801 - Lier, 18 October 1830) was a French actor and is regarded the author of the lyrics of the Brabançonne, the Belgian national anthem. His pseudonym was Jenneval, possibly named after the drama Jenneval, ou le Barnevelt français (1769) of Louis Sébastien Mercier.
Dechet worked in Ajaccio, Marseille and in 1826 at the Paris Odéon. Via Lille he finally came to Brussels, where he played at La Monnaie. In 1828 he returned to Paris in order to work at the Comédie Française, but returned to Brussels immediately after the July Revolution in 1830. He there served with the city guard which was responsible for maintaining law and order.
Dechet is said to have written the text of the Brabançonne during the first revolutionary gatherings at the café "L'Aigle d'Or" in the Brussels Greepstraat in August 1830, shortly after the performance of the opera La Muette de Portici, which triggered the Belgian revolution.
During the Belgian Revolution Dechet became a volunteer in the revolutionary army and joined the corps of Frenchman Charles Niellon. He died during a combat against the Dutch near Lier.
On the Place des Martyrs/Martelaarsplein in Brussels, a column honouring Dechet is to be found, which was created by the sculptor Alfred Crick and inaugurated in 1897.

François Jules Edmond Got (1 October 1822, in Lignerolles, Orne – 21 March 1901, in Passy, a district in Paris) was a French stage actor, comedian, and opera librettist.
Edmond Got entered the Conservatoire in 1841, winning the second prize for comedy that year and the first in 1842. After a year of military service he made his debut at the Comédie Française on 17 July 1844, as Alexis in Les Héritiers and Mascarelles in Les Précieuses ridicules. He was immediately admitted pensionnaire, and became sociétaire in 1850. By special permission of the emperor in 1866 he played at the Odéon in Emile Augier's Contagion. His golden jubilee at the Théâtre Français was celebrated in 1894, and he made his final appearance the year after.Got was a fine representative of the grand style of French acting, and was much admired in England as well as in Paris. He wrote two librettos for operas by Edmond Membrée (1820-1892), François Villon (1857) and L'Esclave (1874). In 1881, he was decorated with the cross of the Legion of Honour.

Michel René Thibaut, known by his stage-name Daubray, born Nantes 7 May 1837, died Paris 10 September 1892 was a leading French actor and singer in operetta, active mainly in Paris but who also appeared around Europe.

Benoît-Constant Coquelin (French pronunciation: [bənwa kɔ̃stɑ̃ kɔklɛ̃]; 23 January 1841 – 27 January 1909), known as Coquelin aîné ("Coquelin the Elder"), was a French actor, "one of the greatest theatrical figures of the age."

Jean Baptiste Prosper Bressant (24 October 1815 – 23 January 1886) was a French actor born in Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, in 1815. In 1838, he went to the French theatre at St. Petersburg, where for eight years he played important parts with ever-increasing reputation. His success was confirmed at the Gymnase when he returned to Paris in 1846, and he made his debut at the Comédie Française as a full-fledged sociétaire in 1854.From playing the ardent young lover, he turned to leading roles both in modern plays and in the classical repertoire. His Richelieu in Mlle de Belle-Isle, his Octave in Alfred de Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne, and his appearance in de Musset's Il faut qu'une porte soit ouverte ou fermée and Un caprice were followed by Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope and Don Juan. Bressant retired in 1875, and died on 23 January 1886. During his professorship at the Conservatoire, Jean Mounet-Sully was one of his pupils.He introduced a new hairstyle; a magazine of the period described it as follows: "The Bressant hairstyle is this: the hair is left long on both sides and raised, a little bouffant, above the ears; on the top of the head it is cut short, no part, neither to right, nor to the left."

Pierre-Martinien Tousez, better known by his stage name Bocage, (Rouen, November 11, 1799–Paris, August 30, 1862) was a French actor.
Born into a poor family of laborers, Bocage was, early on, forced to work in a weaving factory in order to earn an income. Having learned how to read and write without going to school, he began to read, from an early age, the works of Shakespeare. He had an opportunity to get on the stage, and he decided to head on to Paris on foot, in order to fulfill his dreams of being an actor. There he entered the Paris Conservatoire, but had to leave it because his financial resources could not afford him the cost of tuition.
Handsome, talented but undisciplined, he went through a difficult start and had to spend several years on obscure provincial stages, before he joined the cast of the Porte Saint-Martin. In Paris, he was attached to the various dramatic theaters, and became extremely popular as a major interpreter of romantic creations: Antony, Marion Delorme, The Tour de Nesle, Don Juan de Marana, etc. He acted with great distinction and a passionate energy.
In the 1830s, Bocage was, with Michel de Bourges, her divorce lawyer and the Swiss writer Charles Didier, amongst George Sand's lovers.
As a member of the Comédie-Française, Bocage also played the classical repertoire, and he appeared as late as 1819 in La Vieillesse de Richelieu. Bocage also was a member of the Théâtre de l'Odéon, becoming its director in 1845. A politically active citizen, Bocage mingled into the literary movement of his time with a zeal that endowed him with an influence that he tried to put to use during the French Revolution of 1848. He often used his managerial position to have the Odéon's performances serve revolutionary propaganda, and this affected his theatrical career as he was fired from the Odéon in 1848 for anti-government activities.
In 1854 he appeared in Théâtre du Vaudeville in Le Marbrier, by Alexandre Dumas. In 1855, he staged several roles in Paris by Paul Meurice, at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. In 1857, he created the role of Admiral Byng in L'Amiral de l’Escadre Bleue by Paul Foucher, at the Cirque impérial. In 1859 he was appointed manager of the Théâtre Saint-Marcel, where he played in several plays, but that playhouse was too faraway to be successful. In 1861, the aging actor went to play for the Théâtre de Belleville, and he managed to show preeminence in his former role as Buridan.
Shortly before his death, Bocage created the role of the old Duke in Les Beaux Messieurs de Bois-Doré at the Théâtre de l’Ambigu-Comique. He also appeared in Jarvis l’honnête homme, Henri Hamelin and Le Marchand de Londres at the Gymnase.
The National Museum of the Château de Compiègne houses two prints of Bocage by Alphonse-Léon Noël and Benjamin Roubaud. When Bocage's theatrical wardrobe was put up for sale, Virginie Déjazet asked for the dagger that he had used in Alexandre Dumas' Antony, as a most precious souvenir. French writer Paul Bocage was his nephew.

Jean-François-Philibert Berthelier (14 December 1830 – 29 September 1888) was a French actor and singer, who performed many light tenor roles in opéra-comique and opéra-bouffe.