Michael Lonsdale  

Biography

Michael Lonsdale (May 24, 1931 – September 21, 2020), sometimes billed as Michel Lonsdale, was a French actor who has appeared in over 180 films and television shows. Lonsdale was raised by an Irish mother and an English father, initially in London and on Jersey, and later during the Second World War in Casablanca, Morocco. He moved to Paris to study painting in 1947 but was drawn in to the world of acting instead, first appearing on stage at the age of 24. Lonsdale was bilingual and is in demand for English-language and French productions. He was best known in the English-speaking world for his roles as the villainous Sir Hugo Drax in the 1979 James Bond film, Moonraker, the astute French detective Lebel in The Day of the Jackal, and M Dupont d'Ivry in The Remains of the Day. On 25 February 2011, he won a Caesar award, his first, as a best supporting actor in Of Gods and Men. Description above from the Wikipedia article Michael Lonsdale, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.