Jean Desailly (August 24, 1920, Paris – June 11, 2008) was a French actor. He was a member of the Comédie-Française from 1942 to 1946, and later participated in about ninety movies.
Desailly was married to the French actress Simone Valère.
Lino Ventura (14 July 1919 – 22 October 1987), was an Italian actor who starred in French movies.
Born as Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura in Parma, Italy to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, "Lino" dropped out of school at the age of eight and later took on a variety of jobs. At one point Ventura was pursuing a prizefighting and professional wrestling career but had to end it because of an injury. Despite living most of his life in France, he never acquired French citizenship.[citation needed]
In 1953, totally by happenstance, one of his friends mentioned him to Jacques Becker who was looking for an Italian actor to play opposite Jean Gabin in a gangster movie called Touchez pas au grisbi. Becker offered him on the spot the role of Angelo, that Ventura refused at first but then accepted. He has such a presence in the movie that the whole profession took notice.
Ventura started to build up an acting career in similar hard boiled gangster movies, often playing beside his friend Jean Gabin. A couple of his most famous roles include the portrait of corrupt police chief Tiger Brown in 1963's The Threepenny Opera and mob boss Vito Genovese in The Valachi Papers.
Andréa Parisy (sometimes credited as Andrée Parizy), in civil life Andrée Marcelle Henriette Parisy, is a French actress. She was born in Levallois-Perret on 4 December 1935. She is best known for her roles in such films as Le Petit Baigneur and Bébés à gogo; she also appeared in the 1968 film Mayerling, in which she played Princess Stéphanie of Belgium.
Serge Reggiani (2 May 1922 – 23 July 2004) was an Italian-born French singer and actor. He was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy and moved to France with his parents at the age of eight. For many years, he struggled with alcoholism, caused in part by the 1980 suicide of his son Stephan.
After acting school (Conservatoire des arts cinématographiques) he was discovered by Jean Cocteau and appeared in a wartime production of Les Parents terribles ("The Terrible Parents"). During World War II, he left Paris to join the French resistance.
His first feature film came in 1946 with his role in Les portes de la nuit ("Gates of the Night"). He later went on to perform in 80 films including Casque d'or, Les Misérables (1958),Tutti a casa, Le Doulos, Il Gattopardo, La terrazza, The Pianist (1998).
In spite of never quite reaching the peak with his acting career, he did triumph in the theatre in 1959 with his performance in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Les Séquestrés d'Altona. In the meantime, though, in 1965 he began a second career, that of a singer (at the age of 43), with the help of Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand and later with great assistance of the French diva Barbara. Reggiani became one of the most acclaimed performers of French "Chanson" ("song") and although he was in his 40s, his bad-boy rugged image made him popular with both young and older listeners.
Pierre Vaneck (15 April 1931; Lang Son, Vietnam – 31 January 2010) was a French actor.
Son of a Belgian officer, Pierre Vaneck passed his youth to Antwerp before continuing at 17 years, of the studies of medicine in Paris. Then it followed studies of dramatic art with the courses Rene Simon and the Theater Academy, the class of Henri Rollan. It earned its living while working in a saddler and the evening, it recited poems of François Villon in cabarets. It began on the boards in 1952 in "the three musketeers" with the role from Louis XIII. With the cinema, it found its first great role in film of Julien Duvivier, "Marianne of my youth" in 1955.
Pierre Vaneck was first a man of the theatre and television. The general public knew Veneck especially for his television role as father of Fabien Cosma, as well as in many serials (spring tides, the Garonne…). Vaneck died on Sunday 31 January 2010 during a cardiac operation. He was married to Sophie Becker, daughter and sister of Jacques Becker and Jean Becker. His grandchildren, Aurélie and Thibaud Vaneck, are two actors featured in the televised series "Plus Belle la Vie" which plays on France 3 Chanel.