Actor / Director Profile

At the age of three, André Zacharie Raimbourg and his family moved to a town in the region of Normandy called Bourville. He finished school at the age of 15 and began to work as a baker. He was already playing harmonica, mandoline and cornet when he engage himself in a village band. In the beginning of 1940 while in the army making music-hall show for the troops, he change his name for Andrel as his idol Fernandel from whom he was singing the songs. He began to write his own songs, making a name by himself, and so in 1942 took a new name, farther from "Fernandel": Bourvil(le). He was recognize as a stand-up comic, dressed as a farmer growned to fast for the shirt he wear, hair coming down on his forehead, a simple minded but crafty naive. At the end of the war the radio extended his fame. His first parts on the screen were base only on this character. It's only in 1956 with Four Bags Full (1956) of Claude Autant-Lara that he really began to give his real potential as an actor on the screen. His greatest popular successes will come under the direction of Gérard Oury.