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Louis de Funès is a Actor, Director and Scriptwriter French born on 31 july 1914 at Courbevoie (France)

Louis de Funès

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Birth name Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza
Nationality France
Birth 31 july 1914 at Courbevoie (France)
Death 27 january 1983 (at 68 years) at Nantes (France)
Awards Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur

Louis de Funès ([lwi də fy.nɛs]hear; 31 July 1914 – 27 January 1983), born Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza, was a popular French actor of Spanish origin and one of the giants of French comedy alongside André Bourvil and Fernandel. His acting style is remembered for its high energy performance, wide range of facial expressions and engaging, snappy impatience and selfishness. A big part of his most famous work was in collaboration with director Jean Girault, and together, they wrote and directed the French classic L'avare (1980) in which he also starred.

He was a household name in several countries of Europe (Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Romania, USSR and Yugoslavia in particular) for many years, yet remained almost unknown in the English-speaking world. He was seen only once in the United States in 1974 with the release of The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, which was nominated for a Golden Globe. According to a 1968 poll he was France's favourite actor. Funès played over 130 roles in film and over 100 roles on stage.

Biography

Louis de Funès was born on 31 July 1914 in Courbevoie, Hauts-de-Seine to parents from Seville, Spain. Since the couple's families opposed their marriage, they settled in France in 1904. His father, Carlos Luis de Funès de Galarza, a nobleman and his mother side from family marquesses de Galarza, had been a lawyer in Spain, but became a diamond cutter upon arriving in France. His mother, Leonor Soto Reguera, was of Galician extraction, daughter of a prominent politician from Galicia, senator Teolindo Soto Barro.

Known to friends and intimates as "Fufu", de Funès spoke French, Spanish and English well. During his youth, he was fond of drawing and piano playing. He was an alumnus of the lycée Condorcet in Paris, a distinction he shared with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Valéry, Paul Verlaine, Marcel Proust, Jean Cocteau, Serge Gainsbourg, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, amongst others. He later dropped out, and was not successful in his early life; as a youth and young adult, de Funès held modest jobs, from which he was repeatedly fired. He became a pianist, working mostly as a jazz pianist at Pigalle, Paris, famous as a touristic red-light district. There he made his customers laugh each time he made a grimace. He studied acting for one year at the Simon acting school. There he made some useful contacts, including Daniel Gélin, among others. In 1936 he married Germaine Louise Elodie Carroyer, with whom he had one child, a son named Daniel; the couple were divorced in late 1942.

During the occupation of Paris in the Second World War, he continued his piano studies at a music school, where he fell in love with a secretary, Jeanne Barthelémy de Maupassant, a grandniece of the famous author Guy de Maupassant. She had fallen in love with "the young man who played jazz like god"; they married in 1943 and remained together for forty years, until de Funès' death in 1983. They had two sons: Patrick (born on 27 January 1944) and Olivier (born on 11 August 1949). Patrick became a doctor who now practices in Saint-Germain en Laye. Olivier became an actor for a brief while. He became known for the roles he had in his father's films (Les Grandes Vacances, Fantômas se déchaine, Le Grand Restaurant, and Hibernatus are the most famous). At the time, he was an aviator for Air France Europe.

Through the early 1940s, de Funès continued playing piano at clubs, thinking there was not much call for a short, balding, skinny actor. His wife and Daniel Gélin encouraged him until he managed to overcome his fear of rejection. His wife supported him in the most difficult moments, while helping him to efficiently manage his career.