Jean Dasté

Jean Dasté (born Jean Georges Gustave Dasté on 18 September 1904 in Paris) was a seminal French actor and theatre director whose career spanned nearly six decades of French cultural life. Raised in the artistic milieu of early‑20th‑century Paris, he first emerged on screen in Jean Renoir’s 1932 comedy Boudu sauvé des eaux, playing the student, and quickly became associated with the avant‑garde cinema of the 1930s, notably starring as Jean in Jean Vigo’s classic L'Atalante (1934) and as the stern supervisor Huguet in Vigo’s controversial Zéro de conduite (1933). Over the following years he appeared in dozens of films, ranging from Marcel Carné’s epic La Grande Illusion (1937) to Alain Resnais’s La guerre est finie (1966) and François Truffaut’s L'Homme qui aimait les femmes (1977), demonstrating a rare ability to adapt from youthful romantic leads to authoritative elders, even performing as the elderly caretaker in his final screen appearance, Projections (1990), at the age of eighty‑five. Beyond cinema, Dasté’s lasting legacy lies in the theatre. In 1947 he founded the Comédie de Saint‑Étienne, transforming a provincial stage into a vibrant centre for classic and contemporary drama, where he directed works by Shakespeare, Molière, and modern French playwrights. His commitment to theatrical education earned him recognition throughout the Loire department, culminating in a college and a theatre bearing his name. Married to Danish‑born actress Marie‑Hélène Copeau, daughter of the influential drama reformer Jacques Copeau, Dasté balanced a demanding professional life with a private one, although no children are documented. He died on 15 October 1994 in Saint‑Priest‑en‑Jarez, leaving behind a rich body of work that continues to inspire actors and directors alike.