Biography
Jean Daste was one of French theatre's most innovative actor-directors. A gifted mimic as a boy, he was discovered by stage titan Jacques Copeau, who became his father-in-law (after Daste married his actress daughter, Marie-Héléne) and key collaborator in taking theatre to the masses. In 1932, he made his screen debut as the student in Jean Renoir's comedy "Boudu Saved From Drowning," and reunited with the director to play the model maker in the neighbourhood drama "The Crime of Monsieur Lange" and a POW in his pacifist masterpiece, "La Grande illusion." Daste particularly excelled for his director friend Jean Vigo as the lascivious master in the subversive school satire "Zéro de conduite" and the newlywed barge skipper in the poetic realist gem "L'Atalante." During the war, Daste played the tugboat radio operator in the Breton melodrama "Remorques." But he devoted the next two decades to his Comédie de St.-Etienne company, staging plays across the repertoire. He returned to cinema in 1963 in the Boulogne saga "Muriel" and reunited with director Alain Resnais on the political drama "La Guerre est finie," the intense behaviourist study "Mon Oncle d'amérique" and the abstract romantic drama "L'Amour à mort." He also played Professor Philippe Pinel in "The Wild Child," the doctor in "The Man Who Loved Women" and the shady newspaper owner in "The Green Room" for François Truffaut. Acting into his mid-80s, he notably appeared in Costa-Gavras's "Z" and Bertrand Tavernier's "Une Semaine de vacances."
