Tsilla Chelton

Tsilla Chelton — Biography

Tsilla Chelton was born on 21 June 1919 in Jerusalem to French parents of Jewish heritage; after losing her mother at six she followed her father to Antwerp, moved to Switzerland during the Second World War, and eventually settled in Paris, where she married set designer Jacques Noël and had four children. She began her artistic career in 1948 in Marcel Marceau's mime troupe and spent most of her working life in theatre, appearing in eleven plays by Eugène Ionesco and winning the Molière Award for best comic actress for her performance in his The Chairs; she first took the role at 32, playing a 94-year-old woman, and returned to it repeatedly over the years as she herself grew closer to that age. She premiered Bertolt Brecht's plays in France alongside Michel Serrault and Michel Piccoli, and from 1964 taught acting classes at the Théâtre du Splendid, whose students included Gérard Jugnot and Michel Blanc. She found wider fame in cinema at 71, playing the title role in Étienne Chatiliez's Tatie Danielle (1990), a performance that earned her a César nomination. At 90 she played Nusret Teyze, an elderly Alzheimer's patient from Zonguldak, in Yeşim Ustaoğlu's Pandora's Box, winning Best Actress awards at the San Sebastián and Amiens film festivals. Chelton died in Brussels on 15 July 2012 at 93, and her ashes were buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.