Alain Cuny

René Xavier Marie Alain Cuny was born on 12 July 1908 in Saint-Malo, Brittany, France, and died on 16 May 1994 in Paris. Raised largely by an aunt in Boucé and spending several years in an orphanage, Cuny developed an early interest in painting and enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of 15. During this period he encountered Picasso, Braque, and members of the surrealist movement. Before turning to acting, he worked in the film industry as a costume, poster, and set designer on productions by Cavalcanti, Feyder, and Renoir. His transition to the stage came after a meeting with actor-manager Charles Dullin persuaded him to study drama, and he began performing in the late 1930s.

On stage, Cuny became closely identified with the works of Paul Claudel. Following a 1944 production of L'Annonce faite à Marie, Claudel remarked that he had been waiting for Cuny for twenty years. Cuny also championed the texts of Antonin Artaud at a time when Artaud remained largely marginalized. He subsequently worked with Jean Vilar at the Théâtre national populaire and with Jean-Louis Barrault at the Odéon-Théâtre de France. His measured diction and commanding stage presence made him a natural fit for classical repertoire. In 1963, Cuny brought that classical authority to Broadway, appearing in Phèdre.

Cuny's screen career began in earnest with Marcel Carné's Les Visiteurs du soir in 1942, in which he played one of the devil's envoys. Over the following decades he worked with an extensive range of directors, including Louis Malle on Les Amants in 1958, Federico Fellini on La Dolce Vita in 1960, Jean-Luc Godard on Détective in 1985, and Francesco Rosi on Uomini contro in 1970, in which he portrayed the rigidly authoritarian General Leone. He also appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni's productions and in Luis Buñuel's work. In 1974 he played Sitting Bull in the absurdist western Touche pas à la femme blanche, and that same year appeared in Emmanuelle, a role he stated he accepted as an expression of contempt for the film industry.

Late in his career Cuny returned to the work of Paul Claudel. He appeared in the 1988 biographical film Camille Claudel, portraying the father of sculptor Camille Claudel, Louis-Prosper Claudel, a performance that earned him a César Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 1991 he completed a long-planned French-Canadian film adaptation of Claudel's L'Annonce faite à Marie, in which he served as both director and actor; the film won him the Prix Georges-Sadoul. He also gave regular readings of Claudel's work at the Festival d'Avignon. In 1992 he received the Joseph Plateau Lifetime Achievement Award. Cuny married Marie-Blanche Guidicelli in 1962; the couple divorced in 1969. He is buried in Civry-la-Forêt, west of Paris, where he had lived.