Jean Marais

actor and director. Marais starred in several movies directed by Jean

Cocteau, for a time his lover and a lifelong friend, most famouslyBeauty and the Beast (1946) and Orphée (1949). Marais played over 100 roles in film and on television, and also was known for work in other areas of artistic expression, such as writing, painting and sculpture. In the 1950s, Marais became a star of swashbuckling pictures, enjoying great box office popularity in France.  In the 1960s, he played the famed villain of the Fantômas trilogy. In 1963, he was a member of the jury at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival. After 1970, he kept performing on stage until his eighties, also working as a sculptor. His sculpture "Le passe muraille“can be seen in the Montmatre Quarter of Paris. In 1985, he was the head of the jury at the 35th Berlin International Film Festival. He was featured in the 1995 documentary "Screening at the Majestic", which is included on the 2003 DVD release of the restored print of Beauty and the Beast.[5] Marais appears on the cover sleeve of The Smiths single This Charming Man. Marais died in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes.

the actress Mila Parély, the couple split after around two years.

He wrote his own autobiography, L'Histoire de ma vie, published in 1975. From 1953 until 1959, his companion was the American dancer George Reich. In the early 1960s, Marais learned that he had a biological son, Serge Ayala, whom he recognized in 1962 and who eventually took the name Serge Villain-Marais. The son, who became a singer and an actor, died in 2012, a suicide, at age 69.