Famous Biographies

Italy Born: Spezia, Italy, 1 August 1942. Sad-eyed, tragicomic protagonist of Lina Wertmuller’s films. Trained at the Rome Academy of Drama, following studies in electronic engineering, he began his association with Miss Wertmuller while appearing in her play Two and Two Are No Longer Four in Continue reading the biography

Italy Born: Genoa, Italy, 1 September 1922. The son of an Austrian father and Florentine mother, a basketball star at high school, he later abandoned law studies to enroll at Rome’s Accademia Nazionale di Arte Dramatica. He was a seasoned veteran of some 40 plays by the time he made his film d Continue reading the biography

Born: Zurich, Switzerland, 22 March 1941. Leading man of German and international films. Following military service in Switzerland, he began performing on the Berlin stage and by the late 60s was well established as a matinée idol. On the screen from the early 60s, he rose to prominence after appea Continue reading the biography

Born: Mériel, France, 17 May 1904. Died: 1976. The son of café entertainers, he started out at age 14 as a laborer, but at 19 gave in to his father’s urging and entered show business as a dancer with the Folies-Bergère. Played supporting parts in music halls and operettas before returning t Continue reading the biography

Born: Touggourt, Algeria, 10 May 1932. She studied piano and attended the Algerian Conservatory of Dramatic Arts before going to Paris, where she attended the Conservatory and made her stage debut in the early 50s. She began appearing in films in 1955 but came into international prominence only in t Continue reading the biography

Canada Born: Abitibi, Québec, Canada, 21 April 1963. A student at the National Theatre School, Dupuis began work in films in the late 1980s after a successful career in theatre. However, Dupuis’s star status in Québec was assured after his steamy “heart-throb” performance in the Continue reading the biography

France Born: Châteauroux, France, 27 December 1948. One of the principal leading men of the French cinema of the 70s and its top male star of the 80s. A juvenile delinquent in his teens, he took up acting as therapy, on the recommendations of a prison psychologist. While training at dramatic school Continue reading the biography

Born: Paris, France, 22 October 1943. The daughter of veteran stage and screen actor Maurice Dorléac and the younger sister of the late Françoise Dorléac, she made her screen debut while still a schoolgirl of 13, assuming the maiden name of her mother, who was also an actress. Despite the patrona Continue reading the biography

ALAIN DELON France Born: Sceaux, France, 8 November 1935. When the exceptionally handsome young Alain Delon started acting in the 1950s, he bypassed the New Wave, unlike his contemporary Jean-Paul Belmondo. Instead, he came to prominence in René Clément’s Plein Soleil/Purple Noon (1960), bas Continue reading the biography

Born: Bordeaux, France, 1 May 1917. The daughter of an army doctor who died when she was seven, she was raised in Paris and was a 14-year-old cello student at the Conservatoire when her mother entered her in an audition for an adolescent role in the film Le Bal (1931). It was the start of a glorious Continue reading the biography