Michel Simon

Michel Simon
Simon in the trailer for The Train (1964)
Born	François Joseph Simon 9 April 1895 Geneva, Switzerland
Died	30 May 1975(1975-05-30) (aged 80) Bry-sur-Marne, France

Michel Simon (French: [simɔ̃]; 9 April 1895 – 30 May 1975) was a Swiss actor. He appeared in the notable films La Chienne (1931), Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), L'Atalante (1934), Port of Shadows (1938), The Head (1959), and The Train (1964). The actor François Simon is his son.

Simon used to say about himself that he was born in 1895 and, "as misfortune never comes singly, cinema was born the same year".

Son of a Protestant sausage maker, Simon soon left his family and town to go to Paris, where he first lived at the Hotel Renaissance, Saint-Martin Street, then in Montmartre. He worked many different jobs to survive, such as giving boxing lessons or peddling smuggled lighters. He devoured every book he could find, with special preference for Georges Courteline's writings.

His artistic beginnings in 1912 were modest: magician, clown and acrobat stooge in a dancers' show called "Ribert's and Simon's", in the Montreuil-sous-Bois Casino.

Conscripted into the Swiss Army in 1914, he described himself as insubordinate, spending a lot of time in the stockade. He also contracted tuberculosis.

In 1915, while on leave, he saw Georges Pitoëff's early work in the French language, at the Theatre de la Comédie of Geneva, acting in Hedda Gabler.