French director and actor Patrice Chéreau was BOTD in 1944. Born in Lézigné to a middle-class family, he attended school in Paris, becoming well-known to Parisian theatre critics for directing his high-school theatre company. He studied briefly at the Sorbonne before leaving to become artistic director of the Public-Theatre. After several well-regarded theatre and opera productions, he became internationally famous for his 1976 production of Richard Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, commissioned for the 100th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival. Relocating the drama to the Industrial Revolution, he reimagined Wagner’s Norse-inspired myth as a struggle between an entitled bourgeoise class and the oppressed proletariat. Praised for his radical reimagining (and de-Nazification) of Wagner’s work, Chéreau’s production became a landmark in modern stagings of the traditional operatic repertory. He also turned heads with his 1983 feature film debut L’Homme blessé (The Wounded Man), a volatile love story between an older gay man and a teenage boy, set against the emerging HIV/AIDS crisis. He received international acclaim for his 1994 film La Reine Margot (Queen Margot), an operatic sex-and-blood soaked melodrama based on Alexandre Dumas père‘s novel about Queen Margaret of Valois, starring Isabelle Adjani. While continuing his theatre and opera work, Chéreau also directed gay-themed films Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train (Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train) and Son frère (His Brother). His 2001 English-language film Intimacy caused controversy for an unsimulated oral sex scene between actors Kerry Fox and Mark Rylance. He scored another late career triumph with the historical drama Gabrielle, and made occasional acting appearances (including, surprisingly, Michael Mann’s macho action film The Last of the Mohicans). Openly gay since forever, he was in a long-term relationship with the actor Pascal Greggory, who starred in many of his films. He died in 2013, aged 68.