Achille Zavatta (6 May 1915 – 16 November 1993) was a French

clown A clown is a person who performs physical comedy and arts in an Improvisational theatre#Comedy, open-ended fashion, typically while wearing distinct cosmetics, makeup or costume, costuming and reversing social norm, folkway-norms. The art of ...

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

and

circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicy ...

operator.

Biography

Zavatta was born in

La Goulette La Goulette (, ), in Arabic Halq al-Wadi ( '), is a municipality and the port of Tunis, Tunisia. La Goulette is located at around on a sandbar between Lake of Tunis, Lake Tūnis and the Gulf of Tunis. The port, located 12km east of Tunis, is th ...

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

, the son of Federico Zavatta, a circus owner. He started performing in his family's circus show at the age of three, forming with his brothers Michel and Rolph, the ''Zavatta Trio''. He was the interval act at the 1962 Eurovision Song Contest in Luxemburg. To this day the Zavatta Circus tours France and surrounding countries, these performances include live tiger acts, which means the circus cannot tour Britain under the Animal Welfare Act. The circus is rated as a top show in France. He became famous for his skills as a

pantomime Pantomime (; informally panto) is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment, generally combining gender-crossing actors and topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or ...

. He committed

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

in 1993 in Ouzouer-des-Champs,

Loiret Loiret (; ) is a department in the Centre-Val de Loire region of north-central France. It takes its name from the river Loiret, which is contained wholly within the department. In 2019, Loiret had a population of 680,434.

and was interred in the

Père Lachaise Cemetery Père Lachaise Cemetery (, , formerly , ) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France, at . With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Buried at Père Lachaise are many famous figures in the ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

.Paul Bauer. Deux siècles d'histoire au Père Lachaise Mémoire et Documents, 2006,

Filmography

References

External links

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Achille Zavatta en clown
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zavatta, Achille 1915 births 1993 deaths Tunisian emigrants to France Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Suicides by firearm in France French clowns French people of Italian descent French mimes 1993 suicides