Jean-Claude Drouot

Leading Belgian actor of stage and screen who has performed primarily in France. Drouot first acted with a youth theatre at the Université Libre de Bruxelles where he studied law and medicine. In 1959, he moved from Brussels to Paris where he took drama classes with Charles Dullin and then acted on stage, often in plays by Molière. Three years later, on the strength of one of these performances, he was picked to play the title role in Thierry la Fronde (1963), a television adventure series about a dispossessed French nobleman fighting the English during the 100 Years War. On the big screen, he became best known for his roles in Agnès Varda's Happiness (1965) and Claude Chabrol's The Breach (1970). Drouot also appeared with Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner in the pirate adventure/fantasy The Light at the Edge of the World (1971) (adapted from a 1905 novel by Jules Verne and in the excellent historical drama Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) (as Pierre Gilliard, French language tutor to the five children of Tsar Nicholas II). From the 80s onward, he has focused increasingly on his main passion, which is the theatre. He took over the directorship of the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles from 1985 to 1989. In 1999, Drouot joined the ensemble of the Comédie-Française. He has, nonetheless, continued to work steadily in television, whether in the title role of the historical drama series Gaston Phoebus (1978) or in support as Émile Zola in L'affaire Dreyfus (1995) or as defense counsel Malesherbes, arguing for the life of Louis XVI, the Man Who Didn't Want to Be King (2011) .