In the spirit of “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”, I think the time is right for a thread where we name all the French people we truly admire, and why. They can be living or dead, famous or not. I’ll start:
Jaques Cousteau: Few human beings have done as much to educate and inform the rest of us about the amazing and wonderful creatures we share our planet with.
Marquis de Lafayette: Is that the right name? The guy who helped out the US during the American Revolution.
Dom Perignon: Now here was a guy who had his priorities straight.
I know there are many others, I’m leaving a few easy ones for the rest of you…
Usually remembered for the Tower in Paris, Eiffel was a brilliant engineer and businessman, specializing in cast iron and steel construction. The Eiffel Company built bridges, viaducts, dams, factories, wharves, military camps, workshops, etc. world-wide. He aslo dabbled in scientific experiments at the end of his career.
One of the coolest things the Eiffel company built were portable bridges of cast iron. These were turned out in mass production and assembled throughout the world. He’s one of my engineering idols!
My favorite French woman is Colette – Gabrielle Sidonie Colette (1873-1954). She wrote about independent women, passionate love, nature, peace, the mother-daughter bond. Even the English translations of her words reveal her exquisite talent for insight and description.
(She also had her own cosmetics business and was a music hall performer. She became notorious when she dared to bare her breast on stage. And she caused a riot at the Moulin Rouge when she mimed the sex act.)
During World War I she turned her estate into a hospital for the wounded.
In the 1930s Colette was made a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and was the first woman ever to be admitted to Concourt Academy. She became a grand officer of the Legion of Honour in 1953.
Colorful and brazen, she still had an eye for delicate beauty and discovered a relatively unknown woman – Audrey Hepburn – whom she chose to star on Broadway in her most well known work, Gigi, which was written when she was 72.
Inspector Clouseau. Very funny! And let’s not forget the Coneheads, Beldar and Prymaat! Outstanding representatives of the great state of France! Saaaaaaaallllluuuttte!!
Michel de Montaigne (few political philosophers have been as brilliant, few have been as level-headed, and NONE has been as brilliant AND as level-headed).
Oh man, the French cranked out some of the greatest mathematicians ever: Pascal, Fermat, Fourier, Laplace, Lagrange, Descartes, Legendre…and I’m sure I’ve missed many others.
Off the top of my head… Henri Matisse. Michel Houllebec. Raymond Blanc. Charles De Gaulle. Jean Michel Jarre (really!). Catherine Deneuve. Jean Reno. Beatrice Dalle. Gérard Depardieu. Marguerite Duras. Albert Camus. Daniel Auteuil. Luc Besson. Emmanuelle Béart. Laetitia Casta (I greatly admire her).
All o’ those chaps. Plus: Louise Labé (poet), Michel de Montaigne (essayist), Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (scientist), Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord (diplomat), Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (food writer), Louis Pasteur (scientist), Paul Cézanne (painter), Henri Matisse (painter), Jacques Lacan (psychoanalyst), Catherine Deneuve (actress, beauty), Zinedine Zidane (footballer)