Jean Cocteau

A playwright, novelist, artist, poet, designer, and filmmaker, Jean Cocteau was a renaissance man living in Paris through the city's great artistic heyday. Author of Les Enfants Terrible and director of Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus, Cocteau is remembered for his immense and diverse talents, and his ability to move effortlessly between artistic genres. He published his first book of poems, La Lamped'Aladin (Aladdin's Lamp), when he was twenty, and then went on to collaborate on a ballet, compose opera libretti, and publish illustrations. Cocteau directed his first film, Le Sang d'un Poète (The Blood of a Poet), in 1930, and went on to have a memorable career as a filmmaker. By the time of his death, at age 74, Cocteau was best known for being Cocteau: a character, and a man of many talents, who left his imprint on nearly every creative field