Serge Merlin

Serge Merlin will always be remembered for his eccentric character in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Oscar-nominated movie "Amelie." Alongside breakout star Audrey Tautou, Merlin played an artist who was forever working on a reproduction of a famed Impressionist painting. In a film packed with oddball characters, he embodied creative obsession. Merlin began honing his screen acting skills in the early 1960s. He landed his first starring role in "Samson," a drama about a soldier who commits a deadly error. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s he appeared in a number of French television shows and films, and his reputation as a multitalented performer led to parts alongside some of the era's biggest stars. Toward the end of the 1970s, he was a supporting actor in "The Song of Roland," a period drama starring German leading man Klaus Kinski. At the start of the 1980s, he shared screen time with fellow Frenchman Gerard Depardieu in "Danton," a screen biography of one of the men who triggered the French Revolution. As the 1990s dawned, Merlin was nearing the tail end of middle age, but the decade was no less kind to him. Alongside future "Hellboy" star Ron Perlman, he co-starred in the outlandish fantasy thriller "The City of Lost Children," and, again at Depardieu's side, nabbed a role in the epic miniseries "The Count of Monte Cristo." Then, in the early 2000s, came "Amelie." Merlin's subsequent work was in smaller films, but in terms of sheer volume, he was busier than ever.