**Edmond Van Daële (1884-1960)** was a prolific French actor and a distinctive figure in silent cinema and the early years of sound film. With his elegant and often ambiguous presence, he specialized in roles as bourgeois characters, authority figures, doctors, or businessmen, sometimes with sinister undertones.

His filmography includes seminal works. He is best known for his portrayal of Robespierre in Abel Gance's monumental *Napoléon* (1927) and as the banker Saccard in Marcel L'Herbier's *L'Argent* (1928). He also left an indelible, albeit brief, mark in Luis Buñuel's surrealist *Un chien Andalou* (1929), in the role of the seminarian. His career, spanning over 70 films, established him as one of the most recognizable faces of French cinema of the time.