Saskia Cohen-Tanugi
French actress (1958–2020)
Saskia Cohen-Tanugi (24 November 1958 – 20 July 2020) was a Tunisian-born French theatre director, actress, educator, and arts administrator.
Early life and education
Cohen-Tanugi was born to a Jewish family in Tunis, and attended Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Sorbonne. She studied under Antoine Vitez at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris.
Career
Cohen-Tanugi was a theatrical director. Her 1983 production of The Merchant of Venice in Paris was described as "débordante, consolante, convaincante" ("overflowing, consoling, convincing") by one critic, who also admired the show's punk-inspired costumes. She appeared onstage in Frédéric Klepper's 1985 production of Marivaux's The Triumph of Love, as Princess Phocion. She translated and adapted Keter Malchut, a recitation by 11th-century poet Solomon ibn Gabirol, from Hebrew into French, as L'Orage et la Prière; Jean-Michel Dupuis performed her adaptation in Paris in 1997.
She acted in several films, including Never Say Never Again (1983), and wrote others, including Le Maître des Éléphants (The Elephant Master, 1996), with director Patrick Grandperret. She told interviewers that much of her role in Never Say Never Again was cut in the editing process, including a fight scene with Barbara Carrera.
Cohen-Tanugi taught at the Chaillot National Theatre School in Paris for several years; one of her students there was actor David Friszman.
“Saskia Cohen-Tanugi” enters the record as french actress (1958–2020). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Saskia, Cohen-Tanugi and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saskia Cohen-Tanugi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.