Robert Castel

Robert Castel — Biography

Robert Castel was a familiar face of French cinema and television comedy, and an actor who brought the humour of the Pied-Noir community of Algeria to the screen. His birth name was Robert Moyal. Much of his fame came from the Pied-Noir sketches, above all his character Kaouito, that he performed on television with his wife Lucette Sahuquet in the 1960s and 1970s. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2011.

He began as a musician: the son of the well-known Chaabi musician Lili Labassi, he accompanied his father in Franco-Arabic songs. In Algiers he joined the troupe of the Centre régional d'art dramatique and played Robert in La Famille Hernandez, a play about Pied-Noir society. At 24 he entered film with Les Amants de demain (Marcel Blistène) and Un témoin dans la ville (Édouard Molinaro). He then filled many supporting parts in French comedies of the 1970s, among them Il était une fois un flic, Le Complot, Le Permis de conduire and Je suis timide mais je me soigne. He later appeared in Iznogoud (2005) and Du jour au lendemain (2006), and closed his career with the 2017 documentary Les Magnifiques, on French popular culture from the 1960s to the 1980s.

With Sahuquet he appeared on RTL's Les Grosses Têtes and France Régions 3's Les Jeux de 20 heures; she died in 1987. Castel died in Paris on 5 December 2020 after a long illness.