Poet, playwright, novelist, critic, filmmaker, set designer, writer, versatile artist, Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, July 5, 1889, from a family belonging to the high bourgeoisie of Paris. It grows in a worldly environment characterized by love for the arts and matures very early a passion for the theater. The mysterious suicide of her father in 1898, leave him alone with the mother who strongly condition its literary and artistic maturation. Lazy student, left the school in 1907. In 1908, his mother introduced him to the salons of high society, where he distinguished himself as a dandy and as late-Symbolist poet. Between 1909 and 1912 publishes the first books of poetry (La Lampe d'Aladin, The Prince frivolous, La Danse de Sophocle), who later denies it. He attended Proust and some leading figures in the Belle Epoque Paris and knows D'Annunzio. Enters into a relationship with Diaghilev and Stravinsky Set in the Ballets Russes. In 1913, attends the premiere of Stravinsky's Sacre du printemps. The scandal caused by the representation confirms the idea that artistic creativity can not exist without nonconformity. For Cocteau is the turning point, marked by the preparation of the novel-The Potomak pastiche. Lives of the Great War years - which will be tackled in the novel Imposteur Thomas (1923) - between the front and in the cultural life of Paris became one of the protagonists. Paul Iribe public with the magazine Le Mot, on which he signs his drawings with the pseudonym of Jim, is introduced by Valentine Hugo Gross among the painters of Montparnasse; know Modigliani, Severini, Kisling, Apollinaire and comes into contact with Satie and Picasso, which proposes collaboration on the ballet-pantomime Parade. In early '17 he was in Rome with the English painter to work on the project to be undertaken for the Ballets Russes, and here comes in contact with the Italian Futurists. The first ballet, the Théâtre du Châtelet, a scandal is unprecedented and marks a point in favor of modernity in the controversy between it and the tradition. Died in 1918, Apollinaire, Cocteau became its spiritual heir, the protagonist and promoter of all manifestations garde. Have in recent years: the pamphlet Le Coq et l'Arlequin, in which one defender and spokesman of the musicians gathered in the Groupe des Six (Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Tailleferre); Carte Blanche, a series of critical articles written for the newspaper Paris-Midi and Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel, play by surrealist. The relationship of deep friendship with the poet and writer Raymond Radiguet, known in '19, leads him on his way rappel à l'ordre. This is a theory that proposes to overcome the avant-garde for a new classicism that recovery through a novel reading, the roots of European civilization. In this climate are devised, in '22, the critic wrote entitled "The Secret professionnel and Antigone, who resumed play in the famous myth in a modern classic. In December '23 Radiguet causes the death of Cocteau in a serious crisis; tries to escape through the opium from which employees do not deliver anymore despite repeated attempts to detoxify. In recent years close to the neo-Thomistic philosopher Jacques Maritain, which leads him on the path of religion, soon abandoned. During a stay in Villefranche, in '25, he met the painter and decorator Christian Berard, who will hold the designer's favorite show, in '27, the poetry collection Opéra. After the trauma, Cocteau begins to work hard: the play Orphée public in '26 and the collection Le Rappel à l'Ordre criticism, the year following the continued recovery of classical myths writing the drama Œdipe roi. With the 'essai' The Mystery of the laity in 1928, took the defense of Giorgio de Chirico in opposition to the Surrealists. The Italian painter decorates the cocteau edition of the text with five drawings, and in 1934, and is still with Cocteau, enriched with ten lithographs volume Mythologie. In 1929, during a detoxification funded by Coco Chanel, writes Les Enfants terribles, his most famous novel, and Opium, a memoir of his addiction. It dates back to 1930, its first test film, Le Sang a poet, followed, in the Forties and Fifties, La Belle et la Bete, adaptations of Les Parents terribles pièces à deux têtes and L'Aigle, and then Orphée and Le Testament d'Orphée, as well as several movies for which a writer (L'Eternel Retour, Le Baron fantôme, Les Enfants terribles, Ruy Blas, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne). 
In '37 he met Jean Marais, his alter ego stage, the star of almost all his plays and his future films. Began in the '40s friendship with the singer Edith Piaf, for whom the monologue consists Le Bel Indifferent. E ', 1943, meeting with the writer Jean Genet, Cocteau that helps to launch and for which he made drawings of his masterpiece, the novel Querelle de Brest. Since 1950, he divides his time between Paris and the Villa of the Holy Sospir Saint-Jean Cap-Ferrat, belonging to her friend and patron, Francine Weisweiller. These are the years of international fame, which they see as the main cultural and social events of Europe, the Film Festival and the Venice Biennale, the Festival of Cannes - which presides over the jury on several occasions - and that of Spoleto. Urged by many, spoke on presentations, writing prefaces, outlines programs, creates posters. It was the era of official recognition: the entrance and the Académie Royale de Belgique Académie française of '55, an honorary degree at Oxford in the '56 election prince of poets in 1960, succeeding Paul Fort. His interests are addressed in this period, the applied arts: dedicated to the fresco, tapestry, ceramics, to glass art. A friend of Picasso and Matisse, in his lifetime has relations with artists (Modigliani, De Chirico, Tzara, Picabia, Man Ray, Delaunay, Soutine, Kisling, Savinio, Dali), directors (Welles, De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti, Fellini, Bresson, Truffaut and the youth of Nouvelle Vague) and the jet-setters (Manolete, Dominguin, Lucia Bosé, Aznavour, Coco Chanel, Yves Saint-Laurent, etc...) Its image, set by the shot of the main photographers (Man Ray, Beaton, Penn, Halsmann, Clergue) becomes a true icon of the twentieth century, as confirmed by the series of portraits dedicated to him by Andy Warhol, the man who will inherit in contemporary art in a way his role as a privileged witness. Told reporters after a piece of Edith Piaf, who died a few hours earlier, died on October 11, 1963 at Milly-la Forêt, is buried in the chapel of Saint-Blaise des Simples he painted.
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