Tania Balachova

Tania Balachova, born Tatiana Pavlovna Balachova in Saint Petersburg in 1902, was a Russian-French actress and director who became one of the most influential acting teachers in France after the Second World War. Her family emigrated to Brussels, where she studied at the Royal Conservatory and met the Belgian actor Raymond Rouleau, whom she married. In Paris she worked with Gaston Baty, Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet, Georges Pitoeff and Antonin Artaud, and in May 1944 she created the role of Ines in Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos at the Vieux-Colombier. Her pupils included Niels Arestrup, Michael Lonsdale, Maurice Garrel and Antoine Vitez. She died of a heart attack in Bagnoles-de-l'Orne in 1973.