Jean-Louis Barrault

Born Sept. 8, 1910, in Le Vés-inet, Seine-et-Oise Department. French actor and director.

Barrault studied painting at the Louvre School in Paris. In 1931 he entered the Atelier dramatic theater, which was headed by the director C. Dullin. At the same time Barrault studied the art of pantomime under the actor E. Decroux. From 1940 to 1946 he worked at the Comédie Française, where he staged Racine’s Phèdre (1952), Claudel’s The Satin Slipper (1943), and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1945). In 1946, Barrault and his wife, the actress M. Renaud, founded their own company and put on Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1946), Salacrou’s Nights of Anger (1946), Kafka’s The Trial (1947), and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1954).

Barrault has played the roles of Debureau (in Prévert’s Baptiste), Mercury and Scapin (in Moliére’s Amphitryon and Scapin’s Knavery), and Trofimov (in The Cherry Orchard). From 1959 to 1968 he was the head of the Theatre de France (in Paris) and staged Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, Anouilh’s Moliere’s Little Woman, Beckett’s Happy Days, and others.

Barrault is one of the greatest contemporary French actors and directors. He is the author of Reflections on the Theater (1949). Since 1935 he has acted in films (The Children of Paradise, An Amusing Drama, and others).