The great French comic actor Louis de Funès (known as "Fufu" by his friends and admirers) was born in Courbevoie in 1914, the son of a lawyer who became a diamond merchant to further his income.  From an early age, de Funès showed a penchant for tomfoolery, something which caused him trouble at school and made it hard for him to hold down a job.  At the outbreak of war in 1939 he was erroneously turned down by the army for health reasons, and he found a job as a pianist in a Paris night club.

In 1943, de Funès married Jeanne Barthélemy, with whom he would have two sons, Patrick and Olivier.  Having decided to become an actor, de Funès enrolled on a drama course, which proved to be a waste of time except for his meeting with Daniel Gélin, who would become a close friend and provide de Funès with his first acting job, a small walk-on part in Jean Stelli’s 1945 film La Tentation de Barbizon. 

For the next ten years, de Funès would appear in fifty films, but always in minor roles, usually as an extra, scarcely noticed by the audience.  His big break came in 1956 when he appeared as the black-market pork butcher Jambier (another small role) in Claude Autant-Lara’s well-known film WWII comedy, La Traversée de Paris.

De Funès would continue to play smallish roles in films whilst pursuing a stage career, the latter culminating in a magnificent performance in the stage play Oscar (a role which the actor reprised a few years later in the film version).  Stardom finally arrived in 1963 with Jean Girault’s film, Pouic-Pouic, a film which guaranteed top billing for de Funès in all of his subsequent films.

Following on from this first collaboration, director Jean Girault saw de Funès as the ideal actor to play the part of the accident prone gendarme in the series of six ‘Gendarme’ films, beginning with Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez.  De Funès also appeared in another popular series of films, the Fantomas series, in which he starred with legendary actor Jean Marais.

Another director who was impressed with de Funès’ unique brand of comedy was Gérard Oury, who cast him opposite another great comic actor, Bourvil, in the 1964 film, Le Corniaud.  The winning de Funès-Bourvil double act was repeated two years later in La Grande vadrouille, one of the most successful films made in France.   Oury envisaged a further reunion of the two comics in his film La Folie ds grandeurs , but Bourvil’s death in 1970 led to the unlikely pairing of de Funès with Yves Montand in this film.

In 1975, de Funès was admitted to hospital for heart problems and forced to take a rest from acting.  After his recovery, he appeared opposite another comic genius, Coluche, in L’Aile ou la cuisse.  In 1980, de Funès realised a long-standing dream to make a film version of Molière’s play, L’Avare.

A few months after making his final film, Le Gendarme et les gendarmettes, Louis de Funès died from a heart attack, on 27th January 1983.  He is buried in a cemetery at Allonnes, near to Saumur.

Although fame was a long time coming, Louis de Funès is regarded today as not just a great comic actor with an unfaltering ability to make his audience laugh, but practically an institution in his own right.  His many films bear testimony to the extent of his comic genius and demonstrate the tragedy that he never earned the international recognition that he certainly deserved.

To find out more about Louis de Funès, visit: 
http://www.defunes.org
http://www.louisdefunes.com
http://www.angelfire.com/stars/defunes1/
http://www.louisdefunes-fufu.com/
http://membres.lycos.fr/louisdefunes76/
http://www.defunestory.com

For films with Louis de Funès: