French actor-manager, born at Limoges, and in his early years was in business. But he was an enthusiastic amateur actor, and in 1887 he founded in Paris the Théâtre Libre, in order to realize his ideas as to the proper development of dramatic art. In 1894 he gave up the direction of this theatre, and became connected with the Gymnase, and later (1896) with the Odéon. He opened in 1897 his Théâtre Antoine in Paris, which for ten years he made famous as a home of modern realistic drama, playing in particular the works of Brieux, Hauptmann and Sudermann, and staging a French version of King Lear. He returned to the management of the Odéon in 1906 and there produced Julius Cæsar, Coriolanus and a large number of classical and modern dramas, but he retired in February 1914. He was subsequently engaged in writing his memoirs.
