Louis de Funes was a very popular French actor of Spanish origin, who is one of the giants of French comedy. His acting style is remembered for its high energy performance, a wide range of facial expressions and an engaging, snappy impatience. During his film career, and this – about 37 years, Louis de Funes starred in more than 140 films. He was enormously successful in several countries for many years, but remained almost unknown in the English-speaking world. The fact that he can become a comedian, de Funes saw, mixed his beloved wife and a few friends.
Roles in the theater was tiny, had to earn money in nightclubs. However, some people in the audience he could bring to the hiccups, and one old gentleman laughed so hard during the Louis Room, that he almost died of a heart attack. De Funes began his show business career in the theatre, where he enjoyed moderate success. He pursued a theatrical career while playing smallish roles in films. Even after he attained the status of movie star, he continued to play theatre.
His stage career culminated in a magnificent performance in the play Oscar (a role which he would reprise a few years later in the film version). In the film “Oscar” is a small episode in which de Funes does not say a word. Play face and hands. His fingers’ dance in the suitcase of jewels, too, face dances with joy, and with the audience is something terrible. In the hall at that moment is a general groan. To laugh is no power, cheeks and lips were numb, his stomach brings, some are already tapping their feet and toes all the Louis jump.
Unlike the characters he played, de Funes was said to be a very shy person in real life. Capable of an extremely rich and rapidly changing range of facial expressiveness, de Funes was nicknamed “the man with forty faces per minute”. In many of his films, he played the role of a humorously excitable, cranky, middle-aged or mature man with a propensity to hyperactivity, bad faith, and uncontrolled fits of anger. Along with his short height, and his facial contortions, this hyperactivity produced a highly comic effect.
