The Knight of the Legion of Honor and a César Award winner who lived in his own castle also left behind a filmography of about 150 movies. But to land the roles that made him famous, the actor best known as Inspector Juve and Gendarme Cruchot had to appear in hundreds of small parts where he went unnoticed. Like the biblical Moses, the actor, screenwriter, and director spent more than forty years on his journey to professional success, learning to treat fame as merely “Fortune’s smile.” He never regretted the slow pace of his career and was grateful for the experiences life offered him: “If I had to live my life again, I would choose to walk the same path.”
The Son of Spanish Romeo and Juliet
His life felt cinematic from the very beginning. He was born into a family of Spanish aristocrats but grew up knowing little about his roots and family history.
Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza was born on July 31, 1914, in Courbevoie, France, to immigrants from Seville. His parents were a Spanish-Portuguese couple who eloped for love, like Romeo and Juliet. In 1904 they moved to France to marry after their families opposed the union. The couple had three children, but in the 1930s the head of the family left under dramatic circumstances, faking his own tragic death to escape the country.
As befitted a member of the de Galarza lineage, Louis’s father, Carlos Luis de Funès, was educated, but his legal training proved useless in France. To make a living he worked as a gem cutter in a jewelry shop, and the colorblind father relied on his son—nicknamed Fufu—to identify the hues of the stones. While learning the trade in his father’s workshop, Fufu also picked up languages (he knew Spanish, English, and French from childhood), drawing, piano, and the dramatic arts.
Louis as a child
Not especially successful in school, the young Louis de Funès amused classmates and later adults by impersonating teachers and neighbors. The positive reactions from his mother, Leonor de Funès (born Soto Reguera), were his best encouragement; he later called her his first mentor in comedy.
In Search of Destiny
Louis gained early stage experience while still in school. He played his first role as a gendarme in a school performance celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Jules-Ferry institution in Coulommiers. After finishing school, he attended Lycée Condorcet and then enrolled in a professional furrier school at his older brother’s suggestion. He was expelled from the fur school shortly after, but the training he received let him work independently in workshops.
Louis also worked as an accountant and decorator. In 1932 he enrolled in a technical school for film and photography that trained cameramen. Seeing the filmmaking process up close forged a connection with the camera that would serve him later—though he did not finish that technical program either.
Louis de Funès, 1930s
The next creative stops for the young man included modeling for a department store and playing piano in a cabaret. By then he had been a draftsman, tailor, window dresser, delivery boy, milkman, shoeshiner, tinsmith, and traveling salesman, but he preferred to earn a living playing jazz at the Madeleine club in Pigalle. Before long, the expressive musician with a gift for facial comedy became a favorite with audiences.
Louis de Funès with his first wife
One day the jokester at the piano caught the eye of tennis player Germaine Louise Elodie Carruayé, who became Louis de Funès’s first wife in 1936. Their first son, Daniel (who died in 2017), was born on July 12, 1937, but the couple separated three years later. Their divorce was finalized in 1942 at the request of the actor’s new partner. Around that time the 28-year-old Louis enrolled in a drama course with René Simon in Paris, where he met his future second wife, secretary Jeanne Augustin de Barthelemy de Maupassant.
A Family for Life
By the time he married in 1943, Louis—now divorced—was working as a solfège teacher in occupied Paris and wed Jeanne Augustin de Barthelemy de Maupassant, who was said to be a great-niece of Charles No de Maupassant (the supposed connection to the writer Guy de Maupassant appears to be a journalistic invention). This second marriage proved far stronger than the first: it became a lifelong partnership. Despite a later 13-year affair with a young radio host, Louis de Funès remained with Jeanne until his death in 1983.
The couple had two sons: Patrick, born in 1944, who became a doctor, and Olivier, born in 1949, who inherited his father’s acting talent but chose a career as a civil aviation pilot and flew for Air France until retirement.
Over more than forty years of marriage, the artist achieved both personal and professional success. As his manager, Jeanne played a major role in his career, influencing filming decisions, selecting roles, and negotiating contracts.
Louis de Funès with his wife Jeanne Augustin and their sons
Aware of her husband’s long friendship with fellow actor and conservatory graduate Claude Jansac, Jeanne befriended Jansac and endorsed their on-screen partnership. She was present during shoots and kept things on set under control. The arrangement worked: Jeanne, often cast as de Funès’s on-screen wife, helped make the pairing a distinctive feature of his peak period.
Jeanne also suggested attractive younger co-stars for her husband, believing it added charm to the short, balding man. Catherine Deneuve once told reporters she “wouldn’t even consider him for a respectable reason,” a harsh remark that underscored how divided opinions about de Funès could be.
Even at the height of his fame, Jeanne could not shield Louis from temptation. A cocktail party at the Maison de la Radio in 1970 brought the 56-year-old actor together with 27-year-old journalist Masha Beranger. Despite their mutual attraction, the star of Fantômas warned her that he would not leave his family. The affair brought unhappiness to everyone involved; the younger woman did not bring it to an end. “Reputation and money mean nothing,” Louis de Funès said. “What matters is a good heart. Those who lack it are worth nothing.”
The Hard Road to the Top
Audience recognition arrived in the 1960s, and de Funès began appearing in three to four films a year. The actor who brought Commissioner Juve to life and starred in the Fantômas trilogy was discovered by director André Hunebelle. Key films in his career also included Gérard Oury’s The Sucker and The Great Stroll. The actor, who had recently described his role as having been to “open the door for Pierre Lark and then close it,” suddenly found himself awakened to fame later in life. His fruitful collaboration with director Jean Girault led to leading roles in the comedy Pique-Pique and the popular series about The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez. Yet even after the success of Fantômas, he worried audiences would forget him: “There are many people more interesting than me, for I am an ordinary person who just got lucky.”
Louis de Funès as a gendarme
He did not complain about the slow pace of his rise. “This delay allowed me to master my profession better,” de Funès said. “The acting techniques I learned in episodic roles became useful later in leading roles. Now I understand my father’s words about a career, which he compared to climbing stairs—you need to stop and gather strength for the next ascent.”
After suffering two heart attacks in 1975, Louis de Funès followed his doctors’ advice to take a break from filming and moved to the family estate inherited from his wife: the mid-17th-century Château de Clermont. The de Funès estate included 30 rooms, 366 windows, old outbuildings, and a private historic chapel, plus 30 hectares of parkland and 17 hectares of vineyards. In the rose garden beside the castle on the outskirts of Nantes, the artist cultivated roses named after him: breeders christened an optimistic orange variety “Louis de Funès.”
Château de Clermont
After restoring his health away from the hustle and bustle of Paris—he even avoided the phone for a while and spoke only with the gardener—de Funès accepted Claude Zidi’s offer to star in Wing or Thigh. He went on to appear in several more films and even tried directing, with critics calling his efforts modest.
In 1982 he was invited to join the sixth film in Jean Girault’s beloved Gendarme series, The Gendarme and the Gendarmettes, but Girault died during filming. The loss devastated the actor.
His last words to his wife were a quiet confession: “I feel lonely in my room.” On January 27, 1983, Louis de Funès died of another heart attack. That a man who brought so much joy to others suffered three heart attacks reminded the world that even a comic has a fragile heart.
