Michel Leeb

Michel Leeb discovered his passion for jazz at the age of 10 when his mother gave him a Ray Charles's vinyl ('Dedicated to you'). Then his passion grew permanently especially after having seen Oscar Peterson in concert in Paris when he was 16. Actually he always said that he would have chosen jazz if he had the choice between jazz and acting although he's now more famous as a comedian than as a jazz crooner. As a teenager he spent several years at a Jesuit pensionary where he was so bored that he started to develop more his comic skills. Then he became a (funny!) teacher of philosophy but changed later to be a comedian. As Peterson is his model for jazz, Jerry Lewis is his model for acting. His second passion for acting also came from his mother who was an artist and who brought him several times at the Comédie-Française to see some Molière's plays. Therefore he developed a very good sense of humour and mimics that made him a kind of French version of Lewis. He appears in one-man shows and plays in theatres but also appeared in several TV shows and movies. He married his wife Béatrice in Las Vegas and had 3 children: Fanny, Tom and Elsa. His family is very important for him especially because he was very affected by the separation of his parents when he was young. In 2001, he started to act in a theatrical version of Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) (adapted by Albert Algoud) in Paris, with Caroline Tresca.