Polidor
- Category : 1887-births
- Type : GP
- Profile : 4/6 - Opportunistic / Role Model
- Definition : Triple Split
- Incarnation Cross : RAX Contagion 2
Biography
French-born film actor and director, who became a naturalized Italian.
Born into a circus family descended from the French nobility, he first used the surname of one of his characters, Tontolini, before adopting the name Polidor and appearing in nearly fifty short burlesque silent films.
The arrival of sound films relegated him to supporting roles, and before he was sixty, he became the eternal "old man" of the third wave of Italian cinema.
Federico Fellini made him a mascot, in memory of the burlesque films he saw as a child, and in which he first discovered Polidor on screen. The actor became omnipresent in Fellini's films from Les Nuits de Cabiria (1957) to Histoires extraordinaires (1968).
Polidor died on 3 December 1977 in Viareggio, Italy.