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Daniel Gelin, 81; Versatile French Actor Had 60-Year Career

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From Staff and Wire Reports

Daniel Gelin, 81, a French actor known best to American audiences for his role as a mysterious murder victim in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” died Friday at the Georges Pompidou European hospital in Paris. France-Info radio attributed his death to kidney failure.

Gelin had a 60-year career as an actor, primarily in French theater, television and movies. He was known for his eclectic choice of roles, from Napoleon in a 1955 film to a grumpy husband in the French television series “Les Saintes Cheries.”

English-language audiences knew him best for Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1956). He played a Frenchman who befriends Jimmy Stewart’s character, an American vacationing in Morocco. Gelin’s character is stabbed at a street market -- but before he dies, he tells Stewart of an assassination plot.

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Born in Angers, France, Gelin attended the Paris Conservatory. He wrote several books of poems, and is the father of producer Xavier Gelin and actress Maria Schneider.

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