Biography

Actor, singer and multi-talented French musician who plays piano, saxophone and clarinet. His preferences are jazz, blues and tango.

Guy Marchand was born in Paris and grew up there until his military service. While studying at the lycée Voltaire in Paris, he played clarinet at night in the clubs around Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

He began his military service as a reserve officer at the airborne school in Pau, and in 1962 was posted as a sublieutenant (trained paratrooper) to the airborne regiment, which was part of the Air Transport Group (GLA1) at Montigny-lès-Metz.

This experience led to his posting with the 3^rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3^e REI) as a liaison officer during the war in Algeria. For a time he served with the French Foreign Legion.

In his capacity as a paratroop officer, he was one of the technical advisors on the 1962 film, The Longest Day. This paved the way for his entry into the world of cinema.

Guy Marchand is also blessed with the beautiful voice of a crooner and tasted his first musical success with La Passionata, a hit in the summer of 1965. Several equally successful albums and singles followed, but he also loves tango music, and in 1982 he sang Destinée on the soundtrack for Les Sous-doués en Vacances and Le père Noël est une Ordure.

Indeed, Guy Marchand would say, in his usual good humour, that Destinée, along with the Avec le PMU on joue comme on aime advert, were his most important contributions to French culture. After his appearance as a paratrooper in The Longest Day, he acted alongside Lino Ventura and Brigitte Bardot in Robert Enrico's Boulevard du Rhum.

His cinema career is peppered with support roles, one of which, the deputy to Lino Ventura's inspector in Claude Miller's Garde à Vue, earned him a César award for best supporting actor in 1982.

That same year, he had a part in Nestor Burma, the tale of the tough detective, which was first played by Michel Serrault and then by Guy Marchand himself nearly ten years later in the television series of the same name. His performance in Coup de Torchon alongside Philippe Noiret was also admired, along with his roles as a bad-tempered husband in Cousin, Cousine and as a cynical car mechanic in L'Été en Pente Douce.

As well as being an expert parachutist, Guy Marchand is a boxer, a horse rider, a polo player, and a Simca 1000 rally car driver with Star Racing Team. In 2007, his autobiography, Le Guignol des Buttes-Chaumont, was published, and he married Adelina, a young Siberian security officer whom he met in Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport.

Previously he had been married to the actress, Béatrice Chatelier, his fictional wife in Les sous-doués en vacances. After his autobiography he wrote two novels: Un rasoir dans les mains d'un singe, in 2008, and Le soleil des enfants perdus, in 2011, which was awarded the Jean Nohain prize in 2012. Also in 2012 he returned to music with the release of the album, Chansons de ma jeunesse, in which he interprets classic French songs.