Michel Favory ・ Comédie-Française

Joined the Comédie-Française on the 15th of September 1988. Became the 485th sociétaire on the 1st of February 1992.

In 1963, Michel Facory discovered his calling at the Cours René Simon before enrolling at the Conservatoire national supérieur d’art dramatique where he was awarded a 1st and 2nd prize in 1966. In 1964, he had made his debut with the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault in Paul Claudel’s The Satin Slipper (Le Soulier de satin). He has worked with numerous directors, such as Roger Blin, Antoine Bourseiller, Jean-Pierre Miquel, Jacques Rosner, Stuart Seide and Robert Hossein, and played in theaters both in Paris and elsewhere in France, and has taught at the École nationale supérieure des arts et techniques du théâtre.

He joined the Comédie-Française as a pensionnaire on the 15th of September 1988, in order to play Solanio in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice directed by Luca Ronconi. In his new staging of the same play in 2001, Andrei Serban offered him the role of Antonio. In 1992, Michel Favory became the 485th sociétaire of the Company. In 1995, he reunited with Jean-Pierre Miquel to work on Marivaux’s La Double Inconstance, and then on Molière’s The Misanthrope and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. In 2008, he played Don Quichotte in Antonio José da Silva’s Vie du grand dom Quichotte et du gros Sancho Pança which was directed by Émilie Valantin. Yannis Kokkos directed him in two plays by Racine, La Thebaïde and Iphigénie en Aulide. Muriel Mayette-Holtz entrusted him with playing Aziz in Le Retour au désert by Koltès and Cleomenes in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. Alain Françon cast him as Feraponte in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, while Dan Jemmett cast him as Mariano D’Albino in Eduardo De Filippo’s La Grande Magie. Jean-Paul Rousillon directed him in Le Faiseur by Balzac and The Miser (L’Avare) by Molière. Éric Ruf cast him in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, while Clément Hervieu-Léger offered him a role in Frank Wedekind’s The Awakening of Spring.

Michel Favory has been praised for his interpretation of the title character in Pirandello’s The Man with a Flower in His Mouth, a play that was shown at Favory’s instigation and directed by Louis Arene. For director Marcel Bozonnet, he played Monsieur Loyal in Molière’s Tartuffe and for Simon Eine he was Chrysale in Les Femmes Savantes by the same author. He has been in great demand by other renowned directors, such as Youssef Chahine in Caligula by Camus; Georges Lavaudant in Lorenzaccio by Musset; Antoine Vitez in The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht; Jacques Rosny in Le Legs by Marivaux; Jacques Lassalle in Il Campielo by Goldoni and Platonov by Chekhov. Alexandre Lang offered him the title roles in Goethe’s Faust and Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, as well as the role of Elector in Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg. Michel Favory sang in the cabarets Nos plus belles chansons by Philippe Meyer and L’Interlope (Cabaret) written and directed by Serge Bagdassarian. He has been part of the theater for young audiences with Marcel Aymé’s Le Cerf et le Chien directed by Véronique Vella. He directed Pluie de cendres by Laurent Gaudé at the Studio-Théâtre in 2001.

Michel Favory has filmed with directors Pierre Granier-Deferre in L’Ami de Vincent and L’Autrichienne, Geneviéve Lefévre in The Red Skirt (Le Jupon Rouge), and Bourlem Guerdjou in Zaïna. Arnaud Desplechin directed him alongside other actors from the Company in The Forest, an adaptation of Alexander Ostrovsky’s play broadcast on ARTE Television in 2014. In 2017, he was part of the reading of Racine’s Bérénice on France Culture Radio.

Michel Favory is Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres).

During the 2018/2019 season, Michel Favory will be the subject of an issue of Paradoxe(s).