Marcel Marceau
Overview
 
Marcel Marceau was an internationally acclaimed French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 actor and mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...

 most famous for his persona as Bip the Clown.
He was born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 to a Jewish family. His parents were Ann Werzberg and Charles Mangel, a kosher butcher. When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille
Lille
Lille is a city in northern France . It is the principal city of the Lille Métropole, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country behind those of Paris, Lyon and Marseille. Lille is situated on the Deûle River, near France's border with Belgium...

, but they later returned to Strasbourg. When France entered World War II, Marcel, 16, fled with his family to Limoges
Limoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....

.
Quotations

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

The Reader’s Digest (June 1958)

I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.

Wall Street Journal (19 November 1965)

Non!

No!

Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible.

As quoted in Core Media Collection for Elementary Schools (1978) by Lucy Gregor Brown; unsourced variant or misquotation: "A magician makes the visible invisible. A mime makes the invisible visible."

Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power.

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people.

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop.

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment.

The Guardian (London, 11 August 1988)

 
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