René Poyen

Biography

A mop-haired Parisian whirlwind, René Poyen first saw daylight on 5 October 1908, and by age eight he had already sprinted onto the silent screen as the intrepid Bout-de-Zan, stealing scenes in Louis Feuillade’s Judex serial (1916-17). Three years later he swapped crime-fighting for chalk-white faces, sharing the frame with his sister in the playful twin-bill Pierrot, Pierrette (1924). The cameras eventually stopped rolling, but the city that launched him kept him; he slipped away quietly in his beloved Paris on 4 February 1968.