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person_profile-Sacha Pitoëff

Sacha Pitoëff Died at age: 70

Actor | Producer

Fullname:

Sacha Pitoëff

Date of Birth:

Mar 11, 1920

Country of birth:

Switzerland

Died:

Jul 21, 1990

Biography of

Sacha Pitoëff

    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.

Photos of

Sacha Pitoëff

Photos ( 1 Photos

Filmography of

Sacha Pitoëff

Found 31 Movies in total

Patrick Still Lives

Dr. Herschell ( Actor )

... 1980

Inferno

Kazanian ( Actor )

... 1980

Subversion

Le Président ( Actor )

... 1979

Dossier 51

Minerve 1 (voix) ( Actor )

... 1978

... 1977

The Carpathian Castle

Gortz ( Actor )

... 1976

Diary of a Suicide

Le geôlier ( Actor )

... 1973

Catch Me a Spy

Stefan ( Actor )

... 1971

Lancelot of the Lake

l'ennemi (voix) ( Actor )

... 1970

Donkey Skin

Le premier ministre ( Actor )

... 1970

Le Bal du comte d'Orgel

Prince Naroumof ( Actor )

... 1970

Katmandu

Head of the organization ( Actor )

... 1969

Spray of the Days

Pharmacist ( Actor )

... 1968

Lagardère

Philippe de Gonzague ( Actor )

... 1968

... 1967

Is Paris Burning?

Joliot-Curie ( Actor )

... 1966

Lady L

Bomb-throwing revolutionary ( Actor )

... 1965

The Prize

Dranyi ( Actor )

... 1963

... 1962

The Denunciation

Malferrer ( Actor )

... 1962

... 1961

Last Year at Marienbad

M – the other man with the lean face, the husband ( Actor )

... 1961

Captain Fracasse

Matamore ( Actor )

... 1961

Mum's the Word

Jo ( Actor )

... 1960

The Gambler

Afpley ( Actor )

... 1958

... 1958

A Tale of Two Cities

Gaspard ( Actor )

... 1958

The Spies

Leon ( Actor )

... 1957

Anastasia

Piotr Ivanovich Petrovin ( Actor )

... 1956

Rasputin

Le chef de la police ( Actor )

... 1954

The Seven Deadly Sins

The pianist (segment "Pride") (uncredited) ( Actor )

... 1952