# Jean-Pierre Aumont
**Jean-Pierre Aumont** (born Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons; January 5, 1911, Paris – January 30, 2001, Gassin, France) was a French stage, film, and television actor whose career ran from the early 1930s to the mid-1990s, spanning French cinema, wartime Hollywood, Broadway, and French television. Some sources list his birth year as 1909.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) • [2](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jean-pierre-aumont_%28Enciclopedia-del-Cinema%29/) He was known for suave, romantic leading roles, most famously in Marcel Carné's *Hôtel du Nord* (1938), Charles Walters's *Lili* (1953), and [François Truffaut](https://www.edgepedia.org/francois-truffaut)'s *[Day for Night](https://www.edgepedia.org/day-for-night-1973-film)* (1973).[3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/jeanpierre_aumont)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons, born January 5, 1911 in Paris (some sources list 1909)[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) |
| Death | January 30, 2001, at his home in Gassin (Saint-Tropez area), Var, France, of a heart attack, at age 90[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) • [4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-31-me-19352-story.html) |
| Breakthrough | 1934: Oedipus in the first production of Jean Cocteau's *La Machine Infernale* and the lead in Marc Allégret's *Lac aux Dames*[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) |
| War service | Free French Army lieutenant in Tunisia, Italy, and France; wounded twice; awarded the Légion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [6](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.11) |
| Hollywood debut | *Assignment in Brittany* (1943), followed by *The Cross of Lorraine*, under an MGM contract[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-31-me-19352-story.html) |
| Marriages | Actresses Blanche Montel (divorced 1940), Maria Montez (married 1946, died 1951), and Marisa Pavan[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [7](https://www.imdb.com/fr/name/nm0001922/) |
| Writing | Plays including *L'Empereur de Chine* (1947) and *Un beau dimanche*; 1976 Prix Roland de Jouvenel from the Académie française for *Le soleil et les ombres*[8](https://www.academie-francaise.fr/jean-pierre-aumont) • [9](https://lesarchivesduspectacle.net/p/46951-Jean-Pierre-Aumont) |
| Career length | Active from 1931 to 1996, with more than a hundred film roles[10](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2001/02/01/jean-pierre-aumont_4156027_1819218.html) • [11](https://www.valeorine.com/reference/jean-pierre-aumont) |
## Family and training
Aumont was born into a wealthy Parisian family of Jewish background. His father, Alexandre Salomons, was a Dutch Jew and a well-to-do department store executive; his mother, Suzanne Cahen, was a French actress, giving him both Ashkenazi and Sephardi ancestry.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) His uncle Georges Berr was a sociétaire of the [Comédie-Française](https://www.edgepedia.org/comedie-francaise) and a vaudeville author, and his younger brother François Villiers (born François Salomons) became a film writer and director.[10](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2001/02/01/jean-pierre-aumont_4156027_1819218.html) • [1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/)
He followed his mother's profession at 16, enrolling at the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Art, then run by the director [Louis Jouvet](https://www.edgepedia.org/louis-jouvet), who took him into his company and on a European tour.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) • [12](https://www.munzinger.de/register/portrait/biographien/Jean%2BPierre%2BAumont/00/6691) From 1930 he appeared at the Athénée theater in Paris and on other Paris stages.[12](https://www.munzinger.de/register/portrait/biographien/Jean%2BPierre%2BAumont/00/6691)
## French stage and screen, 1931–1939
His first film role came in *Jean de la Lune* (1931), directed by Jean Choux, followed the same year by *Échec et mat*.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) • [10](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2001/02/01/jean-pierre-aumont_4156027_1819218.html) The year 1934 launched his career in two directions at once: on stage he played Oedipus in the first production of [Jean Cocteau](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-cocteau)'s *La Machine Infernale* under Jouvet's direction, and on screen he won the lead in Marc Allégret's *Lac aux Dames*, the swimming-instructor role that made him a star.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews)
Through the rest of the decade he worked with leading figures of French cinema: Madeleine Renaud and [Jean Gabin](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-gabin) in Julien Duvivier's *Maria Chapdelaine* (1934), Harry Baur in *Taras Bulba* (1936), and Michel Simon and Jouvet in Marcel Carné's *Drôle de Drame* (1937), in which he played an amorous milkman.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) Carné cast him again in *Hôtel du Nord* (1938) opposite Annabella, as one half of a young couple in a suicide pact; the film became a landmark of French poetic realism.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [2](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jean-pierre-aumont_%28Enciclopedia-del-Cinema%29/)
## War service and Hollywood
When war was declared in September 1939, Aumont was making *Manon Lescaut*; he served with the French Third Mechanized Division in 1939–1940 and earned the [Croix de Guerre](https://www.edgepedia.org/croix-de-guerre).[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) • [13](https://www.otrr.org/FILES/Scripts_pdf/Hollywood/hollywood32fawc.pdf) After the armistice, given his Jewish origins, he left for the United States with his family and signed a contract with MGM.[2](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jean-pierre-aumont_%28Enciclopedia-del-Cinema%29/) He first came to America in 1942 to perform on Broadway with Katharine Cornell, and an MGM talent scout then brought him to Hollywood.[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-31-me-19352-story.html)
His American film debut was *Assignment in Brittany* (1943), in which he played a pilot posing as a Nazi agent in occupied France; the same year he appeared in *The Cross of Lorraine* as a French soldier in a German prisoner-of-war camp.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) In 1943 he enlisted in the Free French Army and fought with the First Free French Division in the Italian and French campaigns, from Tunisia to the Rhine, being wounded twice; in November 1944 he was ordered to Paris to stage plays for soldiers on leave while he recuperated.[6](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.11) • [14](https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-International-Television-Almanac/1981/International-Television-Almanac-1981-Whos-Who.pdf) For his bravery he received both the Légion d'Honneur and the Croix de Guerre.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews)
## Maria Montez and the postwar years
In 1946 Aumont married the Dominican-born Hollywood actress Maria Montez, with whom he had a daughter, Tina Aumont, who also became an actress.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) The two co-starred for the only time in *Siren of Atlantis* (1948), and the couple moved to France in August 1948, partly drawn by a proposed film project with Jean Cocteau that led Aumont to try to leave his MGM contract.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [15](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.12) After Montez died in 1951 at the age of 31, Aumont retired from acting for two years.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews)
He returned in *Lili* (1953), playing the dashing magician Marco the Magnificent who infatuates [Leslie Caron](https://www.edgepedia.org/leslie-caron)'s waif; the role became one of his most representative.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/jeanpierre_aumont) From then on he moved easily between Europe and America, appearing in Sacha Guitry's all-star historical comedies *Si Versailles m'était Conté* (1954) and *Napoléon* (1955), in *John Paul Jones* (1959) with his third wife, [Marisa Pavan](https://www.edgepedia.org/marisa-pavan), and in *The Devil at 4 O'Clock* (1961) with [Spencer Tracy](https://www.edgepedia.org/spencer-tracy) and Frank Sinatra.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) In 1962 he played opposite Vivien Leigh in the Broadway musical *Tovarich*, as a Russian royal exiled in Paris.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews)
## Later career
By the early 1960s the film roles on offer had become uneventful, and Aumont refocused on the theater and on playwriting.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) He had already written stage works, including *L'Empereur de Chine* (produced 1947, directed by Marcel Herrand) and *Un beau dimanche* (1952), and later *Ange le bienheureux* (1959) and *Farfada* (1957).[9](https://lesarchivesduspectacle.net/p/46951-Jean-Pierre-Aumont) In 1976 the Académie française awarded his memoir *Le soleil et les ombres* the Prix Roland de Jouvenel.[8](https://www.academie-francaise.fr/jean-pierre-aumont)
His most celebrated late screen role came in 1973, when François Truffaut cast him as Alexandre, an aging actor who dies during shooting, in *Day for Night* (*La Nuit américaine*), a film that won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [16](https://www.allocine.fr/personne/fichepersonne-1687/biographie/) He continued working into the 1990s, appearing in [James Ivory](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-ivory)'s *Jefferson in Paris* (1995) as D'Hancarville and in [Ismail Merchant](https://www.edgepedia.org/ismail-merchant)'s *The Proprietor* (1996), his final film, and he received an Honorary César in 1991.[5](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews) • [3](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/jeanpierre_aumont) • [11](https://www.valeorine.com/reference/jean-pierre-aumont) On television he appeared in miniseries including *Sins*, *A Tale of Two Cities*, and *The Count of Monte Cristo* (1998), and played [Edgar Degas](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgar-degas) in *The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles*.[14](https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-International-Television-Almanac/1981/International-Television-Almanac-1981-Whos-Who.pdf) • [17](https://www.metacritic.com/person/jean-pierre-aumont/)
## Death and legacy
Aumont died of a heart attack on January 30, 2001 at his home in Gassin, near [Saint-Tropez](https://www.edgepedia.org/saint-tropez), twenty-five days after his ninetieth birthday.[1](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/) • [10](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2001/02/01/jean-pierre-aumont_4156027_1819218.html) He was survived by his wife, the Italian actress Marisa Pavan, whom he had married in 1969, his sons Jean-Claude and Patrick, and his daughter Tina.[7](https://www.imdb.com/fr/name/nm0001922/) • [4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-31-me-19352-story.html) *Le Monde* counted more than a hundred film roles across a career divided between France and the United States and between cinema and theater.[10](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2001/02/01/jean-pierre-aumont_4156027_1819218.html) A plaque at 4 allée des Brouillards in Paris's 18th arrondissement commemorates him.[11](https://www.valeorine.com/reference/jean-pierre-aumont)
## References
1. [Jean-Pierre Aumont – Biography, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001922/bio/)
2. [AUMONT, Jean-Pierre, Enciclopedia del Cinema, Treccani](https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/jean-pierre-aumont_%28Enciclopedia-del-Cinema%29/)
3. [Jean-Pierre Aumont Movies & TV Shows List, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/jeanpierre_aumont)
4. [Jean-Pierre Aumont; Suave French Actor in Movies, TV, Los Angeles Times (2001)](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-31-me-19352-story.html)
5. [Jean-Pierre Aumont (obituary by Ronald Bergan), The Guardian (2001)](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/jan/31/guardianobituaries.filmnews)
6. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.11](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.11)
7. [Jean-Pierre Aumont, IMDb (French interface)](https://www.imdb.com/fr/name/nm0001922/)
8. [Jean-Pierre AUMONT, Académie française](https://www.academie-francaise.fr/jean-pierre-aumont)
9. [Jean-Pierre Aumont, Les Archives du spectacle](https://lesarchivesduspectacle.net/p/46951-Jean-Pierre-Aumont)
10. [Jean-Pierre Aumont, Le Monde (2001 obituary)](https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2001/02/01/jean-pierre-aumont_4156027_1819218.html)
11. [Jean-Pierre Aumont (1911–2001), VALÉORINE](https://www.valeorine.com/reference/jean-pierre-aumont)
12. [Jean-Pierre Aumont, Munzinger Biographie](https://www.munzinger.de/register/portrait/biographien/Jean%2BPierre%2BAumont/00/6691)
13. [Hollywood radio series script (Aumont profile), OTRR archive](https://www.otrr.org/FILES/Scripts_pdf/Hollywood/hollywood32fawc.pdf)
14. [International Television Almanac 1981, Who's Who](https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-International-Television-Almanac/1981/International-Television-Almanac-1981-Whos-Who.pdf)
15. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.12](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2kcwp28.12)
16. [Jean-Pierre Aumont : Sa biographie, AlloCiné](https://www.allocine.fr/personne/fichepersonne-1687/biographie/)
17. [Jean-Pierre Aumont, Metacritic](https://www.metacritic.com/person/jean-pierre-aumont/)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Screen people and creators › Screen actors of the Anglosphere and Europe › French actors › Surnames A to D*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license