Sim

Sim (born Simon Jacques Eugène Berryer; 21 July 1926 – 6 September 2009) was a French comedian, actor and writer. He was part of the team on Les Grosses Têtes, a radio and TV programme. He also played the part of Geriatrix in the films Asterix and Obelix vs Caesar and Astérix at the Olympic Games.

Simon Jacques Eugène was born on 21 July 1926 to engineer Henri Berryer and his wife Marie-Thérèse (née Bonnemazou). At the time of his birth, Henri was an electrician for the director Abel Gance and grip on the film Napoléon.

The family lived in a small flat in the Rue du Fer-à-Moulin, a cinema district in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, where Simon spent the most part of his earliest years at flats 26, then 28. Very early on, his Russian uncle working at Synchro-Standard took Berryer to see the first talking pictures, which he would remember all his life.

In 1936, the family moved to Nantes when Berryer senior found work as a technician at Le Majestic cinema (later L'Olympic, then La Fabrique).

At the age of eleven, Barryer founded a comedy group called "Sim-Art".(age fourteen, according to other sources). In 1939, with his friend Jojo, Sim got his first award in a funny face competition organised on 15 August at Saint-Julien-de-Concelles. Age fourteen, they played truant and performed sketches in a cellar, with fake letters to their school justifying their absence. Simon later studied at De Launey technical college in Nantes.

In 1941 his parents took over a cinema, L'Éden, in the small town of Ancenis (between Nantes and Angers). The family moved from Nantes to Ancenis en 1942 and reopened the cinema. Sim continued his studies at the Joubert d'Ancenis lycée and worked as projectionist in the family business.