Nationality French Years active 1956–1991 Role Actor | Occupation Actor Name Andre Maranne Died 1992 | |
Full Name Andre Gaston Maillol Born 1926 (age 89–90) Toulouse, France Movies The Pink Panther Strikes A, The Return of the Pink Panther, Revenge of the Pink Panther, Trail of the Pink Panther, Darling Lili Similar People Blake Edwards, Lewis Gilbert, Peter R Hunt, Mike Hodges, Robert Douglas | ||
Andre Maranne (born 1926) is a French-born English actor, best known for playing Frenchmen in English-language roles from the mid-1950s.
Career
Born in Toulouse, France, Maranne's most prominent recurring role was Sergeant Francois Chevalier in six of The Pink Panther films, alongside Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom. Before the Pink Panther, he appeared as a French officer in The War Lover (1962) and cameoed in the James Bond movie Thunderball (1965). He also appeared in such diverse television programmes as Jason King ("Wanna buy a television series?", 1971), Fawlty Towers (as Andre in the 1975 "Gourmet Night" episode), Lord Peter Wimsey ("Clouds of Witness", 1972), Yes Minister (as European Agricultural Commissioner Maurice, proponent of the "euro-sausage", in "Party Games", 1984, the episode in which Jim Hacker becomes UK Prime Minister), All Creatures Great and Small, and Doctor Who (The Moonbase, 1967).
Maranne was also a co-presenter of four in the French Teaching Programme, Bonjour Francoise on the BBC in the 1960s and acted in all 8 episodes of La Chasse au Tresor (1967) as well as all 24 episodes of Ensemble-French for Beginners in the 1970s, also for the BBC.