Sami Frey (born Sami Frei; 13 October 1937) is a French actor of Polish Jewish descent. Among the films he starred in are En compagnie d'Antonin Artaud (1993), in which he portrays French poet and playwright Antonin Artaud, and Bande à part (1964) by Jean-Luc Godard.
Michel Creton (17 August 1942 in Wassy, Haute-Marne, France) is a French actor.
He came to international attention with the release of Un homme de trop (Shock Troops) by Costa Gavras in 1967. Since then, he played in many films, appeared on TV and on stage (for example in 1989 in Un fil à la patte de Georges Feydeau in Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris). While he was in cinema a supporting actor, as one of Bernard Fresson's friends in Max an the junkmen, and mostly rare in major roles like his thief in Nicholas Gessner's Le tuer triste, he was a leading man on TV: alongside to Claude Jade in Fou comme François. For his second TV movie with Claude Jade, Treize, he was the writer of the screenplay.
Dominique Paturel (3 April 1931 – 28 February 2022) was a French actor.
José Noguero (March 10, 1905 – March 11, 1993) was a French film and stage actor and comedian. In 1948 he starred in the film The Lame Devil directed by Sacha Guitry. He was the son of Spanish immigrants. Between 1930 and 1980 he appeared in more than 40 films.
Michel René Jacques Duchaussoy (29 November 1938 – 13 March 2012) was a French film actor, who appeared in more than 130 films between 1962 and 2012. At first a theatre actor, he worked for many years in the Comédie Française, where he started his career in 1964.Duchaussoy performed in many French classic plays including those by Molière, Marivaux, Corneille and Ionesco. He received the prestigious Molière award for best supporting actor in 2003. The deep-voiced actor dubbed Marlon Brando in the French version of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. In 2010 he co-starred with Sophie Marceau in Yann Samuell's L’age de raison.
Michel Valette (born 14 June 1928 in Colmar, France - 14 March 2016) was a cabaret performer, actor, composer, cartoonist and writer.In 1954, he created the cabaret La Colombe in Paris in the Île de la Cité, and over the next ten years, he was beginning to make more than 200 artists, including Guy Béart, Anne Sylvestre, Pierre Perret, Jean Ferrat, Maurice Fanon, Francesca Solleville, Helène Martin, Jean Vasca, Henri Gougaud, Georges Moustaki, Marc Ogeret, Avron and Claude Philippe Evrard, Bernard Haller, Henri Guybet and Romain Bouteille.
In 1964, he was artistic director of the Cabaret Arsouille Milord. It was reviewed in the program starring Catherine Sauvage, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy Béart and Helene Martin. In 1969, he founded the SDA Mouffe (Service Diffusion Artistique) of the House and the host for four and a half years at the same time, he was responsible for the administration of the old Theatre Mouffetard.
In 1975, he starred in movies like "Une partie de plasir" by Claude Chabrol, as well as in films by Jean Delannoy and Paul Vecchiali and among others as well as on television. Then at Chaillot theater in 1989 where he played the Duke of Rochefort in D'Artagnan, directed by Jérôme Savary and Christophe Malavoy. He was part of the "théâtre des cinquante" led by Andreas Voutsinas. He played at Théâtre La Bruyère and toured in Le Malade Imaginaire, directed by Karim Salah, he played the role of Jacques Béralde Fabbri in the play. He also played in Karamazov opened in Cartoucherie de Vincennes and La Rochelle, directed by Anita Picchiarini where he took the role of Starets.
In 1988, he performed in Do that love, directed by Kazem Shahryari at the Arlequin and recorded his first 45 songs recorded on several CDs: "Michel Valette sings Gilbert Hennevic" (Jacques Canetti's home), "De la Colombe the Colombière", "my heart to sing" and "I met wonderful people."
Meanwhile, he wrote, "De Verdun à Cayenne" (ISBN 978-2-84654-150-3)(From Verdun to Cayenne), the true story of Robert Porchet, peace activist from the beginning the 20th century, after three years of military service, he went to the battlefields of the First World War. His desertion after the Battle of Verdun, his capture and his life in the penal colony of Cayenne until the War Resisters' International succeeded to shorten his sentence and once obtained he went back to France.
From 1993 to 2000 he founded and animated in Essonne, the cultural association "Chant'Essonne" whose goal is to spread and promote the French song in Essonne. He made known artists defend the French song quality.As of December 2008 he had recently written a book-document of more than 600 pages: L'histoire de la Colombe ("The History of la Colombe") in which he wrote many anecdotes from the beginnings of many French singers in the 1960s (i.e. Guy Béart, Anne Sylvestre, Pierre Perret, Jean Ferrat). He is currently rewriting a 400-page version Le Joli temps de la Colombe to make a cheaper edition.
Patrick Topaloff (30 December 1944 – 7 March 2010) was a French comedian, singer, and actor.
The son of a Georgian father and a Corsican mother which, according to him, made him "a delicate Franco-Russian dessert", Topaloff began his career on Europe 1, where his comic antics drew a wide audience, especially among children who delighted in his many silly catch phrases. Popular singer Claude François encouraged him to try his hand at singing, and his recording of "Il Vaut Bien Mieux Etre Jeune, Riche et Beau" ("It's Much Better to Be Young, Rich, and Beautiful") became a major hit and the first of several gold records.
In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, writer/director Philippe Clair cast Topaloff in a number of slapstick comedy films similar to the Carry On series in the UK or those made by Jerry Lewis in the US after splitting with Dean Martin. His last feature film was Drôles de Zèbres for writer/director Guy Lux in 1977.
In his later years, problems in Topaloff's private life overshadowed his professional successes. Deeply in debt, he frequently worked without billing in an effort to avoid liens being placed on his salary. In 1995, he was sentenced to a year in prison for non-payment of alimony and taxes. Paroled after four months, he undertook a new and successful stage career.
Philippe Lemaire (14 March 1927 – 15 March 2004) was a French actor. He appeared in more than 90 films from 1946 to 2004.
Lemaire was married three times; Nicole Pinton (1949–1951) (divorced); Juliette Gréco from 1953 to 1956, had one daughter, Laurence-Marie Lemaire (1954–2016); and to Claude Bouton (1959–1980) (divorced). He committed suicide one day after his 77th birthday.
Serge Reggiani (born Sergio Reggiani; 2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-French actor and singer. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight.
After studying acting at the Conservatoire des arts cinématographiques, he was discovered by Jean Cocteau and appeared in the wartime production of Les Parents terribles. He then left Paris to join the French Resistance.
His first feature film was Les portes de la nuit ("Gates of the Night"), released in 1946. He went on to perform in 80 films in total, including Casque d'or, Les Misérables (1958),Tutti a casa, Le Doulos, Il Gattopardo, La terrazza, The Pianist (1998).
Reggiani also triumphed in the theatre in 1959 with his performance in Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Séquestrés d'Altona. In 1961, Reggiani co-starred with Paul Newman and Sidney Poitier in the film Paris Blues, filmed on location in Paris.
In 1965, at the age of 43, he began a second career as a singer, with the help of Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand, and later with the assistance of the French singer Barbara. Reggiani became one of the more acclaimed performers of French chanson, and although he was in his 40s, his rugged image made him popular with both younger and older listeners. His best-known songs include Les loups sont entrés dans Paris ("The Wolves Have Entered Paris") and Sarah (La femme qui est dans mon lit) ("The Woman Who Is in My Bed"), the latter written by Georges Moustaki. He regularly sang songs by Boris Vian (Le Déserteur, Arthur où t'as mis le corps, La Java des bombes atomiques). His young fans identified with his left-wing ideals and anti-militarism, most notably during the student revolts in France in 1968. With age, he became acclaimed as being one of the better interpreters of the chanson and for bringing the poems of Rimbaud, Apollinaire, and Prévert to new audiences.
From 1980, when his son died, Reggiani struggled with alcoholism and depression. In 1995, however, he made a comeback to singing, giving a few concerts despite his deteriorated health and personal distress, the last one being held as late as the spring of 2004.
In later life, he became a painter and gave a number of exhibitions of his works.
Serge Reggiani died in Paris of a heart attack at the age of 82. He is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery.
André Gustave Fernand Raynaud, best known as Fernand Raynaud (May 19, 1926 – September 28, 1973), was a French stand-up comic star, an actor and a singer.