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      Michel Robin, Longtime French Character Actor, Dies at 90

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      This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Michel Robin, an award-winning French actor who became a familiar face from his roles in more than a hundred movies and television shows, died on Nov. 18. He was 90.The cause was Covid-19, according to a statement from the Comédie-Française, the prestigious theater company in Paris where he was a longtime member. The company did not specify where he died.“The French didn’t always know his name, but they recognized his face, which illuminated stages and screens,” the office of the French president said.Michel Robin was born on Nov. 13, 1930, in Reims, in eastern France. After studying law in Bordeaux, he decided to try his luck as an actor and took drama lessons in Paris when he was 26.From 1958 to 1964, Mr. Robin was part of a theater company near Lyon led by the playwright Roger Planchon before moving on to the Renaud-Barrault company in Paris. His career in theater spanned over 50 years, and he distinguished himself in classics by authors like Molière, Chekhov and Brecht.Mr. Robin was especially fond of Samuel Beckett, and played Lucky in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in 1970 and, 10 years later, Clov in his “Endgame.”“It might seem pretentious, but with Beckett, I feel at home,” Mr. Robin told the newspaper Le Monde in a 2003 interview. “It’s so funny and so awful at the same time.”He joined the Comédie-Française in 1994 and became a staple of its productions for 15 years, often playing the classic supporting role of elderly servants.“Michel always played the old, very early in his career,” Éric Ruf, the general administrator of the Comédie-Française, said in a statement about Mr. Robin’s death. “He recently admitted that he was finally old enough for those roles, and that it annoyed him.”Starting in the late 1960s, Mr. Robin also appeared in movies by a number of directors, including Costa-Gavras, Claude Chabrol, and Alain Resnais. In “Amélie,” the 2001 movie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, he played the father of Mr. Collignon, an irritable grocer. On television, he appeared in shows including the French version of “Fraggle Rock” in the 1980s and “Boulevard du Palais,” a police drama, in the late 1990s and early 2000s.In 1979, Mr. Robin won a prize at the Locarno Film Festival for his role as an old farmer in the Swiss comedy “Les Petites Fugues” (“Small Escapes”). In 1990, he won a Molière — France’s most prestigious theater award — for best supporting actor, for his role in “La Traversée de l’Hiver” (“Winter Crossing”), a play by Yasmina Reza about a group of six vacationers on a melancholic mountain retreat.He is survived by a daughter, Amélie, and a grandson, Gaspard. More

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      Dave Prowse, Man Behind Darth Vader’s Mask, Is Dead at 85

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusClassic Holiday MoviesHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDave Prowse, Man Behind Darth Vader’s Mask, Is Dead at 85Mr. Prowse went from being a weight lifting champion in Britain to helping portray one of the most memorable villains in movie history. But his voice did not make the edit.Dave Prowse, left, alongside probably his most famous character, Darth Vader, at a fan convention in Cusset, France, in 2013.Credit…Thierry Zoccolan/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBy More

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      Geoffrey Palmer, Judi Dench’s Sitcom Co-Star, Is Dead at 93

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      Geoffrey Palmer, a British character actor whose career peaked during the long run of “As Time Goes By,” the romantic BBC sitcom in which he and Judi Dench played lovers reunited after 38 years apart, died on Nov. 5 at his home in Buckinghamshire, near London. He was 93.His agent, Deborah Charlton, confirmed the death.Mr. Palmer, worked in films and theater but was best known for his work in television, including comedies like “The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin” and “Butterflies” as well as several episodes of “Doctor Who.”His hangdog expression and grumpy demeanor also made a memorable appearance on a 1979 episode of the sitcom “Fawlty Towers” as a guest who finds it difficult to get his breakfast order while Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), the hapless proprietor of a run-down hotel, is hiding a corpse.“I’m a doctor,” Mr. Palmer says to a waiter, with great exasperation. “I want my sausages!”Over 67 episodes between 1992 and 2005, “As Time Goes By” became popular in Britain (and on PBS stations in the United States) largely because of the chemistry between Mr. Palmer and Ms. Dench.“When you acted with him, you’d just feel very safe,” Ms. Dench told Radio Times, the British television and radio magazine, after Mr. Palmer’s death. “Geoffers was so sure on comedy that you could be pretty secure knowing he would get you through it and make it funny.”Mr. Palmer’s character on “As Time Goes By,” Lionel Hardcastle, had been a coffee planter in Kenya. Ms. Dench portrayed Jean Pargetter, the owner of a secretarial agency. They fell in love in 1953, before the British Army sent Lionel to serve in Korea. A letter he had written to Jean with his military address never arrived, and they went about their lives.They reunite in a bar in England.“Why didn’t you write?” she asks in that scene.“Let’s not play games,” he says. “Why didn’t you write?”“Where to?” she asks. “Second Lieutenant Hardcastle, somewhere in Korea?”“I sent you the full address as soon as I had one,” he says.“I didn’t get a letter,” she says firmly.“Well, I sent it,” he says with finality, then quickly realizes all they had missed.“As ridiculously simple as that?” he asks, with a chuckle. “A lost letter?”Mr. Palmer and Ms. Dench appeared in two films together in 1997: the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” and “Mrs. Brown,” in which Mr. Palmer played the private secretary to Ms. Dench’s Queen Victoria.Mr. Palmer told The Chicago Tribune in 1999 that Ms. Dench “is an actress who anyone would give their eyeteeth to work with.”“She drags you up to her standards,” he added. “She’s extraordinary.”Geoffrey Dyson Palmer was born on June 4, 1927, in London. His father was a surveyor, his mother a homemaker.After serving in the Royal Marines as World War II was ending, Mr. Palmer joined an amateur theater group while working as an accountant. After becoming the assistant stage manager of the Grand Theater in Croydon, he began acting in regional theater.He got his first television roles in the mid-1950s. Early in the ’60s he appeared on “The Saint,” with Roger Moore, and in three episodes of “The Avengers,” in three different roles.He mixed television, film and stage roles for the rest of his career; did voice-over work for commercials; and narrated “Grumpy Old Men,” a BBC talk show on which men aired their gripes about modern life, from 2003 to 2006.His recent film roles included a geographer in “Paddington” (2015), about a bear looking for a home in London, and Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in “W.E” (2011), which was inspired by the romance between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson.His survivors include his wife, Sally (Green) Palmer; a son, Charles; and a daughter, Harriet.The last season of “As Time Goes By” consisted of two episodes in 2005, sort of a Christmas reunion, to wrap up the series. Mr. Palmer said that the impetus for the revival, two years after the previous episodes had aired, came from the United States.“It is ludicrously popular over there,” he told The Times of London. “I think it’s because it’s rather understated, English and well mannered, and nobody is seen in full-frontal nudity.” More