Louis Jourdan, the actor who played Kamal Khan in 'Octopussy' and starred in 'Gigi', passed away. He was 93.
The French actor, who had a long reign as Hollywood's preferred star to play elegant international gentlemen, departed at his home, revealed his friend and biographer Olivier Minne over telephone from Paris, Stuff.co.nz reported.
Jourdan grew up as Louis Gendre in Cannes, where his father was a hotelier, and had studied acting from the prestigious Ecole Dramatique in Paris, after which he took his mother's last name for his movie career.
Though he had confessed in a 1960 interview with Coronet magazine that he always disagreed with producers on playing the man "perpetually cooing in a lady's ear", he later reconciled with his Hollywood image as 'the French cliche.'
In addition to Gigi, Jourdan's notable films include 'Three Coins in the Fountain' (1954), 'The Swan' (1955) with Grace Kelly, 'The Bride Is Much Too Beautiful' (1956) with Brigitte Bardot and 'Can-Can' (1960), which co-starred Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine.
Minne said he had accepted to play the role of a homosexual in 'The Immortalist' on Broadway, which was quite revolutionary at the time.
It was in later years of his career, that he was discovered to play evil villains as well, such as the Afghan prince Khan, James Bond's nemesis in the 1983 film.
He bid farewell to Hollywood in 1992 and in 2010 was awarded with the Legion of Honour award by France.
Jourdan had married Quique in 1946, and had once said that his playboy roles didn't affect his marriage as when "one has been married more than 30 years it would be absurd not to admit there had been some sort of difficulties at some times ... but the important thing is that we have weathered them."
Unfortunately, Jourdans' only child, Louis Henry Jourdan, had died of a drug overdose in 1981.
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