Philippe Gaulier, clown guru and mentor to theatre and comedy greats, dies aged 82

Master clown Philippe Gaulier, the influential founder of France’s École Philippe Gaulier, has died aged 82. Gaulier taught the art of clowning for decades and his students included Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, Rachel Weisz and Geoffrey Rush.

Gaulier died on Monday due to complications from a lung infection. He had a stroke in 2023 and, since then, had “received warm words of encouragement from all over the world”, according to a statement made by his family. “He seemed especially happy to receive letters and messages from his former students. Teaching was his passion and purpose in life.”

Famous for a brutally honest teaching style, Gaulier founded his school, now based in Étampes outside Paris, in 1980, after studying under Jacques Lecoq. There he taught aspiring performers on a first-come first-served basis without auditions, encouraging each student to “find your idiot”. He would make new students wear red clown noses, saying: “When a student puts one on, I see better how he was when he was a child.”

He was known for giving merciless tongue-lashings during classes. “I had moments of extreme suffering there,” comedian Phil Burgers, better known for his stage persona, silent clown Doctor Brown, once told the Guardian. “It’s really, really hard. But once you can handle the insults, something inside you cracks and you can begin.” Like Burgers, many who attended the school went on to achieve success at the Edinburgh fringe and other comedy festivals.

Philippe Gaulier (far right) in the 1960s TV series Les Nouvelles Aventures de Vidocq, with actors Claude Brasseur and Jacques Seiler. Photograph: Mondadori/Getty Images

Born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943, Gaulier trained to be a dramatic actor but said later in life that even when he played tragic roles, audiences laughed. It led him to study with master mime artist Lecoq, whose training was based on mask work, improvisation and clowning.

As a performer, Gaulier specialised in a comic style known as bouffon – a more satirical version of clowning that emphasises the grotesque. But at his school, he taught clowning more broadly to comic actors such as Roberto Benigni.

Sacha Baron Cohen described Gaulier as “the funniest man I’ve ever met”. Helena Bonham Carter said he was “a hilarious man with a real sense of pathos”, and Rachel Weisz said she drew on her work with Gaulier for her performance in the film The Lobster.

Visiting Gaulier’s school in 2016, the Guardian’s comedy critic Brian Logan described a “grizzled, straggle-haired man who couldn’t look or sound more like a ‘clown guru’ if he tried”, but also found “humour and warmth behind every blunt statement and volley of abuse”.

Gaulier was a teacher not only of comedy but performance more broadly, and his school offers courses in Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, Chekhov, melodrama and “masked play”. “I teach theatre,” he told the Guardian. “You take it and, after, you do whatever you want with it.”

His training shaped generations of clowns, comedians and actors, also including Simon McBurney, whose theatre company Complicité was inspired by Gaulier. Other students included the US actor Julia Garner, Australian actor Eryn Jean Norvill and Australian comedian Tom Walker.

Gaulier retired from teaching full-time after his stroke in 2023, but his graduates have continued to give classes adhering to his philosophy.

He is survived by Michiko Miyazaki Gaulier, his wife and former student, who runs the day-to-day operations of École Philippe Gaulier.