Patrick Claude Poivey (February 18, 1948 - June 16, 2020) was a French actor and voice actor.
He was best known for being the French dubbing voice of the majority of Bruce Willis' roles (John McClane in Die Hard most famously), as well as those of Kyle MacLachlan, Don Johnson, Gary Cole and Peter Stormare. He also dubbed Tom Cruise and Mickey Rourke in The '80s and the early 90s before Jean-Philippe Puymartin and Michel Vigné replaced him respectively.
Live-action television-wise his best known role is perhaps Orson Hodge (Kyle MacLachlan) in Desperate Housewives. In animation, Poivey was the voice of Lion-O in ThunderCats and Riff Raff in Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats.
In 1994, during the French voice acting strike, he actively campaigned for the rights of voice actors for better recognition of their profession and audiovisual rights. He was married to the voice actress Séverine Morisot, and passed away from a stroke on June 16, 2020 at age 72. Éric Herson-Macarel replaced him in 2020 and 2021 to voice the final film characters of Bruce Willis prior to the actor's retirement.
Tropes & Trivia in his works:
- The Pete Best: He wasn't the first to dub Bruce Willis in French (Dominique Collignon-Maurin was, in Blind Date), but was clearly the most popular and prolific at it.
- What Could Have Been: The Fifth Element is one of the rare pre-2020 movies where Bruce Willis was not voiced in French by Poivey. Luc Besson wanted Poivey, but he was dismissed following a salary dispute with the local dubbing studio. Willis was instead dubbed by Bernard Métraux in it.
