Michel Orphelin is a mime artist, singer, cabaret performer and actor whose work has left a remarkable mark on audiences around the world. He once played for four months in a satirical revue in London called GB, where Sir Harold Hobson, the doyen of the city's theater critics, wrote in The Sunday Times: "Most impressive of all — it is touching, funny and meticulously observed — is Michel Orphelin's mime of a fisherman... It brought tears to my eyes, which is more than the great Marcel Marceau ever did."
Few actors know that their acting has saved lives — Michel Orphelin is one. His most vivid memory of a life on the stage is of a young man coming to him after a show and telling him that he had given up his plan to kill someone. This was in north-east India, where a guerrilla war was raging. Thus two lives were saved through a simple sketch dramatizing a French woman's hatred of the Germans, and her decision to forgive for the sake of the future.
Through the scout movement and different youth groups, he discovered that he loved making people laugh. He is perhaps best known for his one-man show Poor Man, Rich Man, in which he spent ten years portraying St Francis of Assisi on stage. He has appeared on stage with Jacques Brel and some of the greats of entertainment. Orphelin's philosophy is one of humility: "We are all masterpieces. We only use a hundredth of what God gives us."
