Jean Martin (March 6, 1922 – February 2, 2009) was a French actor of stage and screen. Martin served in the French Resistance during World War II and later fought with the French paratroopers in Indochina. Theatrically, he is perhaps best-known for originating two roles in Samuel Beckett’s most famous plays: Lucky in Waiting for Godot, and Clov in Endgame. During the 1950s, he was a performer at the Théâtre National Populaire and also worked for radio plays.
Making over eighty film and television appearances, Martin is best remembered by international audiences for his role as the French paratroop commander Col. Mathieu in The Battle of Algiers (1965), as well as villainous roles in My Name is Nobody and The Day of the Jackal (both 1973). He was one of the protagonists in Les Compagnons de Baal (1968).
Most of his other screen work was in French or European cinema, and his stage performances have gained him much more recognition and acclaim than his film work. Martin was also an active political leftist, and was fired from the Théâtre National Populaire for signing the manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War. He was also blacklisted from radio work and remained unemployed for a time as a result.
Martin was hired for The Battle of Algiers because director Gillo Pontecorvo was looking for a little-known professional actor to play the part of Col. Mathieu. Martin had by then worked extensively on stage, but had done just a few appearances on screen. Enjoying to work in movies and wishing to develop his film career, Martin applied for the part and was hired. Martin later explained that his working relationship with Pontecorvo on the set of The Battle of Algiers was often difficult, as the director otherwise hired non-professional actors for the film. Martin, as the film’s only professional actor, was sometimes uncomfortable working with untrained performers, while Pontecorvo was worried that their acting styles might be too different from each other and work against the picture. Martin was ultimately very happy with the film.
Jean Martin continued working on stage and on screen, playing a variety supporting roles in French films and television productions. He also provided the voice of the bird in the French animation feature Le Roi et l’oiseau.
Martin died from cancer in Paris on 2 February 2009, aged 86.
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Jean Martin Biography / Wiki
| Name | Jean Martin |
| Also Know | |
| Gender | Male |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Paris, France |
| Date of Birth | 1922-03-06 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 86 |
| Deathday | 2009-02-02 |
Jean Martin Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| The King and the Mockingbird | L’oiseau (voice) | 1980-03-19 | The kingdom of Takicardie quakes under the rule of the tyrannical King Charles V-et-III-font-VIII-et-VIII-font-XVI, whose favourite pastime is shootin… |
| The Battle of Algiers | Col. Mathieu | 1966-09-08 | Tracing the struggle of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale to gain freedom from French colonial rule as seen through the eyes of Ali from his … |
| Forgotten Stones | 1952-01-01 | … | |
| My Name Is Nobody | Sullivan | 1973-12-13 | Jack Beauregard, an ageing gunman of the Old West, only wants to retire in peace and move to Europe. But a young gunfighter, known as “Nobody”, who id… |
| The Time of the Beginning | Direttore clinica / Sottocapo | 1974-10-15 | A “symbolic” character traces the path of man in search of salvation in this world within his own ghosts and deformations…. |
| Dossier 51 | Vénus | 1978-08-30 | French diplomat Dominique Auphal is put under surveillance by an unnamed secret service. They wish to find a weakness in his life in order to control … |
| I’m Losing My Temper | Headmaster | 1974-10-09 | Pierre is a clumsy, overly serious math teacher at an all-girls high school. His life is thrown into chaos after encountering a beautiful British actr… |
| Marxist Poetry: The Making of ‘The Battle of Algiers’ | Self | 2004-08-01 | … |
| The Carpathian Castle | Orfanik, the Inventor | 1976-12-19 | In 1898, strange things happen in a castle not far from the small village of Werst in the Carpathian mountains of Transylvania. Twenty years earlier, … |
| Les Compagnons de Baal | Mauvouloir | 1968-07-29 | A mysterious history, esoteric formulas pronounced by entreated seeking to dominate the world…. |
| Les filous | 1967-01-01 | … | |
| Fear Over the City | Commissaire divisionnaire Sabin | 1975-04-09 | A serial-killer frightens Paris by phoning young ladies at night, telling them insults about their lives. Minos, as he calls himself, wants to prevent… |
| The Cat | Legrand | 1977-04-27 | Amedeo and Ofelia, middle aged brother and sister, own jointly an old decadent, but still attractive, condominium. They want to sell it, but before th… |
| Une Invitation à la Chasse | Le marquis de la Rocherie | 1974-11-01 | Claude Chabrol film for TV based on the short story An Invitation to the Hunt by Georges Hitchcock. Receiving an unexpected invitation to participate … |
| The Inheritor | Mgr. Schneider | 1973-03-22 | After his father is killed in a plane crash, Bart Cordell returns back home to France to claim his inheritance: to lead the industrial empire his fath… |
| Promise at Dawn | Igor Igorevitch | 1970-11-25 | Nina is a former silent-film star from Russia who abandons her career to care for her son. She is a single mother — the boy’s father is a famous acto… |
| The Messiah | Pontius Pilate | 1975-10-24 | Rossellini takes numerous liberties with the original source material, rearranging and omitting events at will, presenting everything in a highly undr… |
| The Wing or the Thigh? | Doctor | 1976-10-27 | Charles Duchemin, a well-known gourmet and publisher of a famous restaurant guide, is waging a war against fast food entrepreneur Tri- catel to save t… |
| The Associate | Bastias | 1979-08-22 | An unemployed investor creates a fictious business partner to attempt to improve business. Eventually, his creation gets out of control as his busines… |
| Cry of the Heart | M. Bunkermann | 1974-09-11 | … |
| A Genius, Two Friends, and an Idiot | Colonel Pembroke | 1975-12-16 | Three rogues set out to rob $300,000 from an Indian-hating cavalry major…. |
| The Wild Goose Chase | Le directeur de la banque | 1975-10-08 | The whole intrigue is centered around carte-blanche documents kept in a vault. Whoever fills in the blank becomes the owner of a revue. Big money is i… |
| HPW ou Anatomie d’un faussaire | 1971-07-27 | Hugo-Paul de Weydroos, forger who manages to mystify the most renowned experts, is an attractive man, not without talent but paranoid and megalomaniac… | |
| The Invention of Morel | Stoewer | 1967-12-08 | Escaped from jail, Luis finds refuge on a remote island where, it is said, several people have died long ago of a mysterious illness. He discovers a l… |
| La puce et le privé | 1981-03-11 | Val Brosse, a private detective, receives Françoise, who confesses to him that she murdered her husband. The story is false, but Val, intrigued, deci… | |
| Lucie Aubrac | Paul Lardanchet | 1997-02-26 | A love story or a tale of the resistance, this poignant movie tells both the haunting story of a French resistance cell in Lyon but also the love of L… |
| Soldier Martin | Monnier | 1966-09-28 | A troupe of French actors on tour in Normandy become involved in the events of WWII…. |
| Judge Fayard Called the Sheriff | Le docteur | 1977-01-12 | Jean-Marie Fayard is a young examining magistrate in a large provincial french city. He belongs to that generation of judges who are endeavoring to re… |
| A Woman at Her Window | Drieu La Rochelle (uncredited) | 1976-11-10 | Greece, 1936. An aristocratic woman engages in a series of loveless affairs before finding herself falling for a political activist…. |
| Successive Slidings of Pleasure | The Priest | 1974-03-07 | A young woman is questioned by the police and the judges, suspected of being a modern witch. The girl who shared her apartment has been found dead, an… |
| Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime | Un responsable d’édition | 1968-04-24 | Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in… |
| Le crime d’Ovide Plouffe | Sculpteur | 1984-08-29 | Ovide Plouffe has married Rita. She still tries to attract other men even after their marriage. Unhappy Ovide feels for Marie – a young French woman h… |
| The Nun | Monsieur Hébert | 1966-05-06 | In eighteenth-century France, a girl is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior treat her in radically different ways, r… |
| The Day of the Jackal | Victor Wolenski | 1973-05-15 | An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated g… |
| Troubleshooters | Homme de Varèse | 1971-04-07 | The day he is released from jail, Serge is expected by four killers sent by Count Charles Varèse assigned to make him confess where he has hidden the… |
| Cecile Is Dead | Le garçon d’étage (uncredited) | 1944-03-08 | Cecile, a young girl who goes to the offices of the Judicial Police several times in a row to complain about nightly visits to the apartment she occup… |
| Don’t Take God’s Children for Wild Geese | A henchman of Charles (uncredited) | 1968-09-06 | Rita is a girl that lives on taking gangsters as lovers. But when the money stops coming, she swears revenge…. |
Credit: TMDB
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