Jacques Varennes

Jacques Varennes — Biography

Jacques Varennes was a French character actor who appeared in around seventy films from the 1930s until the late 1950s. His real name was Louis-Henri André, and he is also found credited as Jacques Varenne. He is remembered not for a single leading part but for a long run of supporting roles, from historical costume pictures to Jean Cocteau's screen work.

One of his earliest notable films was Maurice Tourneur's 1938 historical drama Le Patriote. Before and during the war he played Maxime in Personal Column (1939) and Octave in Don't Shout It from the Rooftops (1943). After the war he appeared in Cocteau's films, as the Comte de Foehn in The Eagle with Two Heads (1948) and in the cast of Orfe (1950); he also played the prosecutor in La Poison (1951) and the Marquis de Bièvre in Caroline Chérie (1951).

Through the mid-1950s he continued with small parts in period pictures, among them Le Rouge et le Noir and Si Versailles m'était conté... (both 1954), Napoléon (1955), Lovers and Thieves and L'étrange Monsieur Steve (1957). He died on 6 September 1958 in Saint-Cloud.