Patrick Poivey

Cast

Born

February 18, 1948 · Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France

Died

June 16, 2020

Patrick Poivey was a French actor very active in dubbing, he was notably known for being the regular French voice of Bruce Willis, Kyle MacLachlan, Don Johnson, Gary Cole, and Peter Stormare. He was also the first recurring voice of Tom Cruise and Mickey Rourke in their acting debuts. As a young actor, he performed on stage, before discovering, thanks to Paul Meurisse, the exercise of dubbing in the early 1970s. With an immediately identifiable vocal timbre, he lent his voice to some young Hollywood firsts in cinema and television in the 1980s and 1990s: Don Johnson (Miami Vice, Nash Bridges), Emilio Estevez (Young Guns), Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives), Mickey Rourke but also Kevin Costner and Kenneth Branagh. He dubbed Tom Cruise in some of his most popular films (The Color of Money, Top Gun, The Firm, Mission Impossible, Rain Man) but he was best known for being Bruce Willis' "official" voice since the actors' debuts on television in Moonlighting. He also participated in numerous documentaries, advertisements, and radio coverings as voice-overs, notably for Rire & Chansons and Alouette radios, being the network official voice. In 1994, he actively engaged in the strike movement of dubbing actors in order to assert their rights on the broadcasting of their work in cinema and on television. He died from a stroke on June 16, 2020, at the age of 72.