He was the French voice of JR Ewing in Dallas, a hit series from the 1980s. Actor Dominique Paturel died at the age of 90, his family announced on Tuesday, March 1.
“My uncle died Monday evening at the hospital in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor). He had been suffering from diabetes for some time and had to have an amputation. His general condition had deteriorated recently,” his nephew Loïc Paturel told AFP. The funeral will take place on Friday at 2:30 p.m. in Pordic (Côtes-d’Armor), “the family cradle, where he will be buried”, continued his nephew.
“He was one of the last to have played under the direction of Jean Vilar (illustrious director, founder of the Avignon Festival). He had nearly 80 plays to his credit and around thirty films. He was part of this generation that knew how to do everything”, added Loïc Paturel. But his uncle was best known to the general public for dubbing JR, an unscrupulous character who attained cult status, from the American series Dallas.
French voice of a hundred characters
“I was very lucky. Maybe, thanks to dubbing, I had the choice to accept or refuse theater or television projects that did not suit me”, he once told the website “Objectif Cinéma”. Dominique Paturel (no relation to the singer and actress Sabine Paturel) dubbed a hundred characters. He was the French voice of Michael Caine, Terence Hill, Robert Duvall, Frank Sinatra, and Vittorio Gassman.
He can also be heard in the French versions of films like The Winner, Patton, Barry Lyndon, All the President’s Men, The Elephant Man, Mad Max 2, Millennium and a number of iconic American series (Columbo, The Invaders, The A-Team, Desperate Housewives…)
Previously, in the 1960s and 1970s, he was a familiar face on the small screen thanks to series like The Knight of Maison-Rouge or D’Artagnan. In cinema, he was directed by renowned directors such as Christian-Jaque, André Cayatte or Philippe de Broca.