Jean-Louis Barrault

Jean-Louis Bernard Barrault was a French actor, director, and mime artist born on 8 September 1910 in Le Vésinet, France. He worked across stage and screen throughout a career spanning several decades, and appeared on Broadway between 1952 and 1957. He died of a heart attack in Paris on 22 January 1994 at the age of 83 and is buried alongside his wife at the Passy Cemetery in Paris.

Barrault's father, a Burgundian pharmacist, died during the First World War. Barrault attended the Collège Chaptal until 1930, after which he enrolled at the École du Louvre. Beginning in 1931, he spent four years studying and performing at Charles Dullin's L'Atelier, where his first stage role was a small part in Ben Jonson's Volpone. During that period he could not afford rent, and Dullin permitted him to sleep in the theatre on Volpone's bed. It was also at L'Atelier that Barrault first encountered the mime practitioner Étienne Decroux, with whom he collaborated to create the pantomime La Vie Primitive in 1931.

From 1942 to 1946, Barrault was a member of the Comédie-Française, where he performed lead roles in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Corneille's Le Cid. In 1946, he and his wife, actress Madeleine Renaud, whom he had married in 1940, established their own company, Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, at the Théâtre Marigny in Paris. The couple toured extensively together, including in South America. Barrault published his memoirs, Reflections on the Theatre, in 1951. He was appointed director of the Théâtre de France in 1959, a position he held until 1969, and was reappointed director of the Théâtre des Nations in 1971. He retired from the theatre in 1990.

Barrault's Broadway credits included Le Proces, Hamlet, The Misanthrope, Baptiste, and Volpone, among other productions. He also served as a book writer for Broadway. On screen, Barrault made his film debut in Marc Allégret's Les Beaux Jours in 1935 and went on to appear in nearly 50 films over the course of his career. Among his most recognized screen performances was his portrayal of the mime Jean-Gaspard Deburau in Marcel Carné's Les Enfants du Paradis, released in 1945.

Barrault was the uncle of actress Marie-Christine Barrault and served as a sometime sponsor of director Peter Brook.