Christian Jean-Marie Clavier (born May 6, 1952 in Paris) is a French actor, screenwriter, producer and director.
One of the founders of the Parisian comedic theater troupe Le Splendid' with Thierry Lhermitte, Michel Blanc, and Gérard Jugnot (they were all high school friends), later joined by Josiane Balasko and Bruno Moynot. They were most famous for their smash hit stage play-turned-movie Le père Noël est une ordure (Santa Claus Is a Stinker) and the vacation comedy movies Les Bronzés (French Fried Vacation) and Les Bronzés font du ski (French Fried Vacation 2). All of these count among the most popular and quotable comedy films ever made in France, enjoying widely watched reruns every year without any sign of stopping.
Much like Louis de Funès before him (to whom he's sometimes compared/considered a successor to), the overwhelming majority of Clavier's movie roles are comedic, and often about nervous and/or obnoxious Butt Monkeys, and are usually huge national box office draws. His most famous roles outside the Splendid' films include time-travelling moronic medieval squire Jacquouille and his prickly 20th century descendant Jacquart in Les Visiteurs (he also wrote that trilogy) and Astérix the Gaul. He also often plays characters who are caricatures of the modern French upper class, either Nouveau Riches or Old Money.
His non-comedic roles are pretty much all to be found on TV, with productions such as a 2000 miniseries adaptation of Les Misérables in which he played Monsieur Thénardier alongside Gérard Depardieu as Jean Valjean and Napoléon, a 2002 miniseries about Napoléon Bonaparte in which he played the main role (alongside Depardieu, again).
Works on TV Tropes:
- French Fried Vacation series as Jérôme Tarayre
- French Fried Vacation (1978)
- French Fried Vacation 2 ( 1979)
- French Fried Vacation 3 (2006)
- Les Baba Cool (1981) as Antoine Bonfils
- Santa Claus Is a Stinker (1982) as Katia
- Gramps Is in the Resistance (1983) as Michel Taupin
- L'Opération Corned-Beef (1991) as Jean-Jacques Granianski
- Les Visiteurs
- Les Visiteurs (1993) as Jacquouille / Jacques-Henri Jacquart
- Les Visiteurs II: The Corridors of Time (1998) as Jacquouille / Jacques-Henri Jacquart / Prosper le Purineur / Antoine Claude Jacquouillet
- Les Visiteurs: Bastille Day (2016) as Jacquouille / Antoine Claude Jacquouillet / Edmond Jacquart
- Just Visiting (2001) as André le Pâté
- Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993, French dub) as Chance
- Guardian Angels (1995) as Father Hervé Tarain and Father Tarain's bad angel
- Asterix as Asterix the Gaul
- Asterix & Obelix Take on Caesar (live-action, 1999)
- Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (live-action, 2002)
- The Secret of the Magic Potion (animation, 2018)
- Les Misérables (2000) as Monsieur Thénardier
- Napoléon (2002) as Napoléon Bonaparte
- Kaamelott (2007) as the Jurisconsulte
- Kaamelott: Premier Volet (2021)
- The Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio (2018) as Count Pacôme de Champignac
Tropes in his works:
- Nervous Wreck: His comedic routine in the 1990s and early 2000s, with characters such as Jacquart in Les Visiteurs, Jérôme in Les Bronzés and Father Hervé Tarain in Guardian Angels.
- Those Two Actors:
- He was famously paired with Jean Reno in the Les Visiteurs series, L'Opération Corned-Beef and The Corsican File. Reno also voiced Shadow in the French dub of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, while Clavier voiced Chance.
- Becomes "Those Three Actors" if you add Valérie Lemercier for all of the above-mentioned films minus The Corsican File.
- Clavier and Lemercier were also reunited in 2022's Irréductible.
- Appeared alongside Gérard Depardieu in Guardian Angels, Les Misérables, Napoléon and in the first two Asterix films. Director Bertrand Blier reunited them in Convoi Exceptionnel in 2019.
- Playing Against Type: He's had two major non-comedic roles, Napoléon Bonaparte in Napoléon and Thénardier in Les Misérables. The rest is invariably comedic in nature.
- Typecasting:
- Until he played Asterix and Napoleon, he often played a nervous wreck finding himself in slapstick, if not outright Butt-Monkey, situations. Half the time it's a Nouveau Riche.
- Since about 2014 starting with Serial (Bad) Weddings (Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au Bon Dieu?), he invariably plays French Old Money characters the movies make fun of for being conservative or slightly chauvinistic (or denying they are in the latter case).
