Biography

With eye-catching good looks, blond Lithuanian-born actor Jacques Sernas (aka Jack Sernas) is best known for cutting a fine figure in European costumers and spectacles in the 1950s and 1960s. Born on July 30, 1925, his father died when he was a year old and the boy would be raised by his mother in Paris. After schooling there he joined up as a French Resistance fighter during W.W.II. Captured by German forces and imprisoned for over a year in Buchenwald, he was eventually freed.

Sernas originally studied medicine in the early postwar years but acting soon caught his fancy. He made an unbilled movie debut in the French film Miroir (1947) starring Jean Gabin. In the years to come Italian/European action films would dominate his screen time. Audience attention grew in proportion with a variety of comedies, dramas, costumers and adventures including Jeunesse perdue (1948) [Lost Youth]; La révoltée (1948) [Stolen Affections]; Le faucon rouge (1949) [The Red Falcon] in which he played the title role; Blaubart (1951); the costumed romancer Les chemises rouges (1952) [Anita Garibaldi]; and Lulù (1953) co-starring with Valentina Cortese.

The actor hit major international attention after being cast as Paris opposite sex sirens Rossana Podestà and Brigitte Bardot in Hélène de Troie (1956) and Hollywood itself took brief notice, handing him a starring role in the Warner Bros. war film Jump Into Hell (1955) and a few TV guest parts. When nothing came of it, he returned to Italy and was for the most part relegated to supporting characters, making one lasting impression as a fading matinée idol in Fellini's masterpiece La dolce vita (1960).

Other Italian/European films in and around this decade included Aphrodite, déesse de l'amour (1957) co-starring Belinda Lee; Les nuits de Lucrèce Borgia (1959); Les Horaces et les Curiaces (1961) starring Alan Ladd; La bataille de Corinthe (1961) in which he co-starred with John Drew Barrymore; Romulus et Remus (1961) starring musclemen Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott; Les 55 Jours de Pékin (1963) starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, which filmed in Spain; Guerre secrète (1965) [aka The Dirty Game] starring Henry Fonda, which filmed in Germany; the "spaghetti western" Trois cavaliers pour fort Yuma (1966), Lingots à gogo (1969) starring Fred Astaire and Richard Crenna, which filmed in Italy and England; and the Italian/US co-production L'assaut des jeunes loups (1970), a war drama starring Rock Hudson.

As the years rolled by Sernas was seen less and less on film and more and more on Italian TV. Into the millennium he appeared in a few elderly roles, one being a 2003 TV movie about Pope John XXIII. Jacques died at age 89 on July 3, 2015 in Rome.

- IMDb mini biography by: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net