is a French actor and scriptwriter of Greek descent. Podalydès has appeared in more than 140 films and television shows since 1989. He starred in The Officers' Ward, which was entered into the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

He is a former student of the Paris Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique, and became a pensionnaire of the Comédie-Française in 1997, and then a sociétaire in 2000, now considered as one of their major actors. He became the 505th sociétaire on 1st January 2000. Before joining that company he had appeared in Sophonisbe by Corneille (1988), L'Épreuve and Les Sincères by Marivaux (1989), La Double Inconstance by Marivaux and Ruy Blas by Victor Hugo (1990), Le Misanthrope by Molière, and Bérénice by Racine (1992), Les Fausses Confidences by Marivaux (1992), and Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler in 1995.

From 2006, he began directing for the stage, with several classics: Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, then in 2008 Fantasio by Alfred de Musset. In 2011, with Emmanuel Bourdieu and Éric Ruf, staged Le Cas Jekyll by Christine Montalbetti In 2012, he directed the opera Don Pasquale by Gaetano Donizetti at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

In the world of opera, Podalydès directed the 2017 production of Rossini's Le Comte Ory at the Opéra Comique, Paris,  and Falstaff at the Opéra de Lille conducted by Antonello Allemandi in May 2023.