Fernand Ledoux

Biography

Fernand Ledoux (born in Tienen, Belgium, 1897 – died in Villerville, France, 1993) was a Belgian-born actor who built his career in France, mainly on stage. He is closely associated with the Comédie-Française and with French cinema from the 1930s to the 1960s.

He studied in Belgium and moved to Paris in 1919, where he trained with Raphaël Duflos at the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique. He began with small parts at the Comédie-Française, where he was a member from 1931 to 1942. Jacques Feyder, who had met him at the Conservatoire, gave him his first screen role in The Spelling Mistake, and directed him again in L'Atlantide.

His best-remembered role is the stationmaster Roubaud in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine (1938). During the German occupation he left the Comédie-Française rather than perform for the occupiers, and turned to film, with titles such as Jacques Becker's It Happened at the Inn. He also worked in American cinema and with directors including Orson Welles, Jacques Demy and Claude Chabrol. He retired after Mille milliards de dollars (1982). His legacy rests mainly on character roles across a filmography of close to eighty titles.

Key films

• La Bête Humaine (1938), by Jean Renoir. He plays the stationmaster Roubaud, perhaps his most remembered role.
• Les Visiteurs du soir (1942), by Marcel Carné. One of the key titles of his full-time return to film.
• It Happened at the Inn (1943), by Jacques Becker. His work in this wartime black comedy reinforced his reputation as a character actor.
• The Truth (1960), by Henri-Georges Clouzot. A supporting role as a forensic doctor in a courtroom drama.
• The Trial (1962), by Orson Welles. He appears as a court official in Welles's adaptation of Kafka.