Marc Porel

Marc Porel, born Marc Michel Marrier de Lagatinerie on 3 January 1949 in Lausanne, Switzerland, emerged from a distinguished theatrical lineage that spanned generations of European stage and screen talent. His mother, Jacqueline Porel, was a celebrated actress and the granddaughter of the legendary French diva Gabrielle Réjane, while his father, Gérard Landry, also pursued an acting career. This artistic heritage extended to his half‑siblings, including photographer‑journalist Jean‑Marie Périer, born from his mother's liaison with singer Henri Salvador, and the Périer children Jean‑Pierre and Anne‑Marie from her marriage to actor François Périer. Immersed in this creative environment, Marc adopted the stage name Marc Porel and embarked on a film career that would see him appear in roughly forty productions between 1967 and his untimely death in 1983. During his sixteen‑year tenure in cinema, Porel cultivated a reputation for portraying charismatic, often brooding characters in both French and international films, contributing to projects such as The Devil's Nightmare (1971) and The Last Mercenary (1975). His personal life was marked by two marriages: first to French model Bénédicte Lacoste, with whom he fathered a daughter before their divorce, and later to Italian actress Barbara Magnolfi in 1977. Tragically, Porel’s promising trajectory was cut short when he died of a heroin overdose on 15 August 1983 in Casablanca, Morocco, at the age of thirty‑four. He was interred alongside his family in Paris’s Passy Cemetery, leaving behind a legacy that reflects both the glamour and the melancholy often associated with mid‑century European cinema.