1920-03-11 ( 105 years old ) in Genève, Switzerland
Sacha Pitoëff (born Alexandre Pitoëff; 11 March 1920 – 21 July 1990) was a Swiss-born French actor and stage director.
Pitoëff was born in Geneva, Switzerland, on 11 March 1920, the son of Russian-born parents Ludmilla (née Smanova) and Georges Pitoëff. Both of his parents were born in the city of Tbilisi (in modern-day Georgia), then a part of the Russian Empire. The Pitoëffs were prominent actors in France, Georges was a founding member of the Cartel des Quatre (Group of Four), a group including Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, and Gaston Baty, dedicated to rejuvenating the French theatre.
Sacha graduated from Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly-sur-Seine, outside Paris. He studied acting and stage direction under Jouvet at the Théâtre de l'Athénée.
During World War II, the younger Pitoëff followed his mother back to Switzerland, where he played his earliest roles. After the war he returned to Paris, becoming general manager at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord. He made his directorial debut with a 1950 staging of Uncle Vanya, which proved both a critical and commercial success.
He became a fixture of Parisian theatre in the 1960s, becoming the director of his own troupe. His repertoire included works by Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco, Hugo Claus, Robert Musil, Anna Langfus and Anton Chekhov. With Romy Schneider, he staged The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters at Théâtre de l'Œuvre.
In 1967, he achieved his greatest success with a well-regarded production of Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV, which he directed and starred in, with Claude Jade.
Pitoëff played his first film role in 1952, in the omnibus film The Seven Deadly Sins. Appearing in over 50 films, he is probably best known for his performance in Alain Resnais's enigmatic Last Year at Marienbad (1960), as the unnamed man who may or may not be Delphine Seyrig's husband.
He was featured in roles of various sizes in such films as Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Espions (1957), Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965), René Clément's Is Paris Burning? (1966), and Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin (1970). He also appeared in several Hollywood productions, including Anatole Litvak's Anastasia (1956) and The Night of the Generals (1967), Mark Robson's The Prize (1963) and Dick Clement's To Catch a Spy (1971).
Toward the end of his acting career, he began appearing in horror films. His final role was as the bookseller Kazanian in Dario Argento's Inferno (1980).
For the last ten years of his life, Pitoëff was a professor at the National School of Theatre Arts and Techniques (ENSATT) in Lyon, where his students included Gérard Depardieu, Jean-Roger Milo and Niels Arestrup.
Pitoëff was married to French actress Luce Garcia-Ville, until her death by suicide in 1975. He had two siblings, actress Svetlana Pitoëff and writer Aniouta Pitoeff.
His height and distinctively-gaunt, lanky appearance may have been a consequence of Marfan syndrome.
Having suffered from depression in the final years of his life, he died in Paris at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital on 21 July 1990, at the age of 70.
Source: Article "Sacha Pitoëff" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Movies
Patrick Still Lives
1980-05-15
Inferno
1980-02-07
Subversion
1979-05-28
Dossier 51
1978-08-30
Barry of the Great St. Bernard
1977-01-30
The Carpathian Castle
1976-12-19
Antigone
1974-12-21
The Oil War Will Not Happen
1974-01-02
Diary of a Suicide
1973-03-22
Catch Me a Spy
1971-09-06
Lancelot of the Lake
1970-12-25
Donkey Skin
1970-12-20
Le Bal du comte d'Orgel
1970-06-30
Les salons de Baudelaire
1970-01-01
Katmandu
1969-09-26
La Ville en haut de la colline
1969-01-01
Spray of the Days
1968-04-21
Lagardère
1968-04-04
The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl
1968-02-09
Le système Fabrizzi
1967-09-29
The Night of the Generals
1967-01-29
Is Paris Burning?
1966-10-26
Lady L
1965-12-17
The Prize
1963-12-25
The Doll
1962-11-07
The Denunciation
1962-07-18
Vengeance of the Three Musketeers
1961-10-25
Last Year at Marienbad
1961-05-25
Captain Fracasse
1961-04-21
Mum's the Word
1960-04-26
The Gambler
1958-10-26
That Night
1958-09-11
A Tale of Two Cities
1958-02-07
The Spies
1957-10-10
Anastasia
1956-12-13
Rasputin
1954-07-19
The Seven Deadly Sins
1952-03-27
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