Paris - The last master of the mime, Marcel Marceau passed away at the age of 84.
He was a French Jew and was the world’s most famous mime artist. He survived the Nazi occupation and managed to make quite a living. He was the bigest theatrical export for France in the past 50 years.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy remembered Marceau and stated he was “one of France’s most eminent ambassadors.”
He was born in 1923 and the son of a Jewish butcher. He lived through the Holocaust and performed, it seemed, because “people who came back from the camps, couldn’t talk about it, they didn’t know how to express it .. Maybe that has counted, in my choice of silence.”
He was inspired by actors such as Gary Cooper, David Copperfield, Michael Jackson, etc.
He performed internationally for decades after making it big in television in America in the 1950s and on stage.