French actor, born in Paris. He became prominent on the French stage at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre in 1900, and the Variétés in 1901, and then became a member of the Comédie Française, but he resigned very soon in order to become director of the Renaissance, where he was principally associated with the actress Marthe Brandès, who had also left the Comédie. Here he established his reputation, in a number of plays, as the greatest contemporary French actor in the drama of modern reality. In 1920 he came to London, with his son Sacha, and made an immense success in Pasteur, playing himself the eminent scientist, and in his son’s play Mon Père avait Raison.
Sacha Guitry (1885–1957), also a distinguished actor, was born at Petrograd. He was the author of a number of brilliant modern comedies, of which Tel Père Tel Fils (1909); Nono (1910); Le Veilleur de Nuit (1911); La Prise de Berg-op-Zoom (1912) are other examples. He married Yvonne Printemps, herself an actress of distinction. Jean Guitry, another son of Lucien Guitry, and a promising actor in modern comedies, was killed in a motor accident near Deauville on the 11th of September 1920.
