He was the father of modern imitation.
Claude Véga, who died Monday at the age of 91, was the first man to play female celebrities on stage, parodying Barbara, La Callas and Jacqueline Maillan with talent and humor.
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“Every time I go out, people throw themselves at me”
“It is enough for me to think of them to transform myself into them. A detail, a defect, a way of speaking and I caught them”
, confided Claude Véga, who in the 1970s and 1980s, will be a sought-after and regular guest of the famous television programs of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier, Danièle Gilbert then more recently of Patrick Sebastian.
On stage, the resemblance to his models was amazing.
He slipped into the skin of his muses, without aping them, and himself became a diva.
Never mean -
"I was only able to imitate the people I loved"
- he evoked them by saying "
my Maillan
" or "
my Feuillère
" (Edwige Feuillère, a great actress who will have been the cinema godmother of Alain Delon).
Polymorphic gifted, women will not have been his only sources of inspiration, he will also have imitated Aznavour, de Funès, Montand or even Jacques Dutronc.
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The 400 Blows with François Truffaut
Born Claude Thibaudat on June 2, 1930 to a Parisian father and a Provençal mother, he never left the 9th arrondissement of the capital where he grew up.
During the Occupation, he made the "400 blows" with his childhood friend, a certain... François Truffaut.
“His mother didn't take much care of him, mine took a liking to him.
He was a half-brother and I was going to see if he had had dinner, if he had slept or if he had not taken refuge in a cinema in the neighborhood as he was used to
, ”confided in 2012l in 2012 the great filmmaker at the weekly
Le Point
.
Truffaut will also offer him a role, that of a disturbing strangler, in his film
Domicile marital
(1970).
He quickly abandoned his business studies for drama lessons and worked in the evenings at the Liberty's cabaret.
His vocation was traced: “
I wanted to become an actor.
I started with imitations to survive and pay for my lessons at the Conservatory.
I recited the Fables of La Fontaine, like
Le Chêne et le Roseau
, alternating about ten voices.
Tobacco assured.
One evening, Maria Callas is in the room and hears him imitate her.
She immediately becomes infatuated with him and wants to have him with her on the shows.
Ditto for the actress Edwige Feuillère.
Claude Véga also performed at Bobino and opened for several great artists such as Edith Piaf, Joséphine Baker and Charles Trenet.
He, the modest and discreet man, met with immense success at the end of the 1960s.
We only swear by him.
"
He is small in size (1m65) but he is a giant in humor
", wrote
L'Aurore
in 1973. The following year, the program "Top à Claude Véga" was followed by 70% of viewers.
A triumph.
At the age of 60, in 1990, he gave up imitation to devote himself exclusively to his other passions, theater and drawing.
We find him in particular at the Comédie de Paris in
Funny taste
, based on texts by Boris Vian.
He was also successful with
Piaf, je t'aime
au Cirque d'hiver (1996) (two Molières nominations) then in the play
Sylvia
, directed by Lars Schmidt.
Also endowed with a nice pencil stroke, he regularly published almanacs illustrated with naive and fresh drawings à la Jacques Faizant.
He is a great artist, gifted with a thousand talents, who has just left us today.