French actor Roland Lesaffre was BOTD in 1927. Born in Clermont-Ferrand, he claimed to have joined the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation during World War Two. He then joined the French Marine corps, and was taken prisoner and tortured by Japanese troops during manoeuvres in South-East Asia. After the war, he and Gabin attended acting lessons in Paris, where they were discovered by gay filmmaker Marcel Carné. Lesaffre made his screen debut in Carné’s 1950 film La Marie du Porte, beginning a long professional and personal relationship. Their notable collaborations include 1953’s Thérèse Raquin, in which Lesaffre was filmed as the heroine’s (and the camera’s) object of erotic obsession, and L’Air de Paris (The Air of Paris), a homoerotically-charged drama about an ageing boxing coach and a young amateur boxer. Lesaffre also had eye-turning roles in Alfred Hitchcock‘s crime caper To Catch a Thief, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Quand tu liras cette lettre (When You Read This Letter) and in Edmond Gréville’s thrillers Les Menteurs (The Liars) and L’Accident (The Accident). His film career declined by the 1970s, and his later appearances were mainly in television. Later in life, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. Lesaffre described his bond with Carné as based on “homosensuality” rather than homosexuality, remaining friends despite Lesaffre’s marriage to Yôko Tani in 1955, and to Marie Busselier in 1998. He and Bussellier remained together until his death in 2009, aged 81. He was buried next to Carné at the Cimetière Saint-Vincent in Paris.