Gérard Barray Biography

MARITAL STATUS
Profession Actor
Nationality French
Birth November 2, 1931 (Toulouse, Haute-Garonne – France)

BIOGRAPHY
Real name Gérard Marcel Louis Baraillé, Gérard Barray began studying medicine after his baccalaureate, but very quickly, driven by his passion for jazz, he turned to careers in the arts and entertainment. .

Moving to Paris, he was admitted to the Cours Simon and at the same time performed as a pianist in the cabarets of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. On stage, he stood out by performing the play L’Aigle à deux têtes by Jean Cocteau alongside Edwige Feuillere .

After a stint with Jacques Doniol-Valcroze , director of L’Eau à la bouche (1960) and one of the cantors of the New Wave, Gérard Barray achieved popularity by portraying the Duke of Vallombreuse in Le Capitaine Fracasse (1961), adaptation of the work of Théophile Gautier signed Pierre Gaspard-Huit .

At the beginning of the 1960s, cloak and dagger cinema became a popular genre in France, and the actor with an advantageous physique one of its most worthy representatives. Thus, we see him in turn embody D’Artagnan in the saga of the Three Musketeers (1961), The Knight of Pardaillan (1962-1963), Scaramouche (1963) or even the privateer Surcouf in Thunder on the Indian Ocean and The Tiger of the Seven Seas (1966).

Comfortable in handling a saber or on a galloping horse, Gérard Barray did not forget the filmmaker Gaspard-Huit with whom he filmed Shéhérazade (1962) and Alerte à Gibraltar (1963).

Another recurring character to have brought him fame: Commissioner San Antonio. Twice, the hunk lends his features to him, the first in Sale temps pour les flies (1966) and the second in Béru et ces dames (1968), opus both directed by Guy Lefranc .

But at the end of the 1960s, his hour of glory had passed and his performances in the war film Flames on the Adriatic (1968) and The Witness (1969), feature film by Hungarian director Peter Bacso about the dark years of the Stalinist regime, are hardly successful.

After a winking appearance in Le Cinéma de papa (1971) by Claude Berri , Gérard Barray left the film sets to become a real estate developer in Spain. Alejandro Amenábarfound his trace at the end of the 1990s and gave him one of his very last roles, Duvernois, a TV presenter, in the thriller Ouvre les yeux (1998).

He then shot several films produced or co-produced by Spain, from Sexy Beast (2000) by Jonathan Glazer to Galindez (2003) with Harvey Keitel, which would be his last film.