Sacha Pitoëff

Also Known As: Sacha Pitoeff

Biography: 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.

Department: Acting

Place of Birth: Genève, Switzerland

Birthday: March 11, 1920

Deathday: July 21, 1990

Adult: No

Gender: Male

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Known For:

The Prize
A Tale of Two Cities
Is Paris Burning?
Captain Fracasse
Donkey Skin
The Doll
Anastasia
Inferno
The Denunciation
The Seven Deadly Sins
Subversion
Patrick Still Lives
The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl
Lagardère
The Spies
Vengeance of the Three Musketeers
The Oil War Will Not Happen
That Night
Le Bal du comte d'Orgel
Catch Me a Spy
Mum's the Word
Diary of a Suicide
Katmandu
The Carpathian Castle
Lancelot of the Lake
The Night of the Generals
Spray of the Days
Last Year at Marienbad
Barry of the Great St. Bernard
La ville en haut de la colline
The Gambler
Dossier 51
Lady L
Rasputin
Antigone
Le système Fabrizzi
Les salons de Baudelaire