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Edmonton Journal (18/Apr/1989) - Vanel, 96, seen in 200 films

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Vanel, 96, seen in 200 films

Charles Vanel, a craggy-faced French actor with a piercing gaze who appeared in more than 200 movies in his 76-year film career has died in a Cannes hospital at age 96.

During his film career, which began in 1912, he worked under some of the industry's finest directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Bunuel, Jacques Feyder and Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Hitchcock in 1954 cast him as a policeman on the trail of Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief.

The year before, he won the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Clouzot's 1953 classic The Wages of Fear.

Vanel was born to a seafaring family in Rennes on Aug. 21, 1892. He dreamed of becoming a naval officer, but problems with his eyes forced him to give up the idea of going to sea.

Moving to Paris with his family in 1904, he discovered the theatre and at 16 made his first appearance on stage in Hamlet.

His career spanned silent movies to television roles in the 1960s and 1970s. His last film was Jean-Pierre Mocky's The Seasons of Pleasure in 1988.

For the past 20 years, he lived in the south of France near Cannes with his wife, Arlette.