Best of France
List activity
250 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
25 people
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
In 1995 he began his first one man show, the same year he met Bruno Salomone, Eric Collado, Emmanuel Joucla and Eric Massot with whom he created the "Nous Ç Nous". In 1999, he became "Loulou" in Un gars, une fille (1999). This part permitted him to show his talent to a larger public. Since the end of "Un gars, une fille" in 2003, he has appeared in many films.- Actress
- Make-Up Department
- Director
Audrey Justine Tautou was born on August 9, 1976 in Beaumont, France, to Evelyne Marie Laure (Nuret), a teacher, and Bernard Tautou, a dental surgeon. Audrey showed an interest for comedy at an early age and started her acting lessons at 'Cours Florent'. In 1998 she won the best young actress award in the ninth 'Jeune Comedien de Cinema Festival' in Bezier. Then, she came to the attention of Tonie Marshall who gave her a role in her film Venus Beauty Institute (1999) for which she won a Best New Actress Cesar. It came as a surprise to even Audrey: "I was so certain I could not be chosen that I told her that she probably dialled a wrong number." The director chose her for her natural nature: "She came, she gaffed, she turned reddish, her ears were in a funny position and her hair was relaxed. In five minutes, she gave me the heart of the character, a petite young girl who would like to be a lady and will become a woman." In 2000, Audrey was again nominated for a Cesar and her movie Amélie (2001) has been a phenomenal success worldwide.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France, to Édith (Arnold) and Fabien Delon. His father was of French and Corsican Italian descent, and his mother was of French and German ancestry. His parents divorced early on, and Delon had a stormy childhood, being frequently expelled from school.
In 1953/1954 he served with the French Marines in Indochina. In the mid-'50s he worked at various odd jobs including waiter, salesman and porter in Les Halles market. He decided to try an acting career and in 1957 made his film debut in Yves Allégret's Quand la femme s'en mêle (1957). He declined an offer of a contract from producer David O. Selznick, and in 1960 he received international recognition for his role in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In 1961 he appeared on the stage in "'Tis a Pity She's a Whore", directed by Visconti, in Paris. In 1964 he formed his own production company, Delbeau Productions, and he produced a short film directed by Guy Gilles. In 1968 he found himself involved in murder, drug and sex scandal that indirectly implicated major politicians and show-business personalities, but he was eventually cleared of all charges. In the late 1960s he formed another company. Adel Film, and the next year he began producing features. In 1981 he directed his first film, To Kill a Cop (1981).
Delon was a sensation early in his career; he came to embody the young, energetic, often morally corrupted man. With his breathtaking good looks he was also destined to play tender lovers and romantic heroes, and he was a French embodiment of the type created in America by James Dean. His first outstanding success came with the role of the parasite Tom Ripley in 'Rene Clement''s sun-drenched thriller Purple Noon (1960). Delon presented a psychological portrait of a murderous young cynic who attempts to take on the identity of his victim. A totally different role was offered to him by Visconti in Rocco and His Brothers (1960). In this film Delon plays the devoted Rocco, who accepts the greatest sacrifices to save his shiftless brother Simon.
After several other films in Italy, Delon returned to the criminal genre with Jean Gabin in Any Number Can Win (1963). This work, a classic example of the genre, was distinguished not only by a soundly worked-out screenplay, but also by the careful production and the excellent performances of both Delon and Gabin. It was only in the late 1960s that the sleek and lethal Delon came to epitomize the calm, psychopathic hoodlum, staring into the camera like a cat assessing a mouse. His tough, ruthless side was first used to real effect by Jean-Pierre Melville in The Samurai (1967). In 1970 he had a huge success in the bloodstained Borsalino (1970)--which he also produced--playing a small-time gangster in the 1930s who, with Jean-Paul Belmondo, becomes king of the Marseilles underworld. Delon later won critical acclaim for his roles, against type, in Joseph Losey's Mr. Klein (1976) in which he played (brilliantly) the icily sinister title role, and the art-movie Swann in Love (1984). He has an older son Anthony Delon (who has also acted in a number of movies) from his first marriage to Nathalie Delon, and has a young son and daughter, Alain-Fabien and Anouchka with Rosalie.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Jean-Alexis Moncorgé started his career with 15 years at the theatre and debuted at the "Moulin Rouge" in Paris in 1929. Despite of his rude aspect he knew to be the gentleman of the French cinema in the time between the two World Wars. One of his most popular personalities was inspector Maigret. But he was also able to play all other kind of people: aristocrats, farmers, thieves and managers. He never stopped working and when death surprised him in 1976 he was still an institution for the French audience.- Jean Reno was born Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jiménez in Casablanca, Morocco, to Spanish parents (from Andalucía) who moved to North Africa to seek work. His father was a linotypist. Reno settled in France at 17. He began studying drama and has credits in French television and theater as well as films. His first two marriages both ended in divorce, and he had two children with each of them. He keeps homes in Paris and Los Angeles.
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza was born on July 31, 1914, in Courbevoie, France. His father, named Carlos Luis de Funes de Galarza, was a former lawyer of Seville, Spain, who became a diamond cutter. His mother, named Leonor Soto Reguera, was of Spanish and Portugese extraction.
Young Louis de Funès was fond of drawing and piano playing. He dropped out of school and worked various jobs, mostly as a jazz pianist at Pigalle, making his customers laugh every time he made a grimace. He studied acting for one year at the Simon acting school. There he made some useful contacts, including Daniel Gélin among others. During the occupation of Paris in the Second World War, he continued his piano studies at a music school, where he fell in love with a secretary, named Jeanne de Maupassant, a grand-niece of writer Guy de Maupassant. She had fallen in love with "the young man who played jazz like god"; they married in 1943, and had two sons born in 1944 and 1949. Funès continued playing piano at clubs, knowing there wasn't much call for a short, balding, skinny actor. His wife and Daniel Gelin encouraged him until he managed to overcome his rejection. He made his film debut in 1945, at the age of 31, and went on playing about one hundred film roles in the next twenty years.
Louis de Funès shot to international fame in the 1960's after his roles in such slapstick comedies as The Gendarme of Saint-Tropez (1964) and the Fantomas (1964) trilogy. He brilliantly portrayed a funny French policeman, whose hilarious hyperactivity, uncontrolled anger, and sardonic laughter produced a highly comic effect. Funès was voted the most favorite actor in France in 1968, and remained very popular in Europe during the 1970's. He also continued to play on stage during his career as a film star, and was acclaimed for his stage works in classic French theatre. Funès was instrumental in making film adaptations of such theatre plays as 'Oscar continues' and the Molière's 'The Miser', among other plays.
Nicknamed "the man with the forty faces per minute", Louis de Funès played bit parts in over eighty films, before he got his first leading roles, eventually becoming the leading French comedian. He co-starred with the major French actors of the time, including Jean Marais and Mylène Demongeot in the Fantomas trilogy, and also Jean Gabin, Fernandel, Bourvil, Coluche, Annie Girardot, and Yves Montand. Funès's collaboration with director Gérard Oury produced a memorable tandem of Funès-Bourvil. He also worked with Jean Girault in the famous 'Gendarmes' series. In a departure from the Gendarme image, Funès collaborated with Claude Zidi, who wrote for him a new character full of nuances and frankness in The Wing or The Thigh? (1976), which is arguably the best of his roles.
Funès played over 130 roles in film and over 100 roles on stage. From 1943-1983 Louis de Funès was married to Jeanne Barthelemy de Maupassant. Their son, Olivier De Funès , had a brief acting career before becoming a pilot with Air France, his other son, named Patrick de Funès, became a medical doctor. Louis de Funès was also a rose grower, a variety of roses has been named the "Louis de Funès rose" after him. He died of a heart attack and complications of a stroke on January 27, 1983, in Nantes, France. He was laid to rest in the Cimetière du Cellier, and a monument of him was erected in the rose-garden of his wife's castle.- Actor
- Soundtrack
One of France's most beloved character stars from the 1950s through and including the 1980s was the Italian-born Lino Ventura. Born Angiolino Joseph Pascal Ventura to Giovanni Ventura and Luisa Borrini, on July 14, 1919, in Parma (northern) Italy, young Lino moved with his family at a young age to Paris, where he grew up. A school dropout at age eight, Lino drifted from job to job (mechanic's apprentice, etc.), unable to decide on what to do for a living. Marrying in 1942 at age 23, he and wife Odette Ventura had four children.
Lino finally found a career calling as a Greek/Roman-styled wrestler and went on to become a professional European champion in 1950. He was forced to abandon this sporting life, however, after incurring a serious injury in the ring. Looking for gangster types for his next film, director Jacques Becker gave the inexperienced 34-year-old his first acting job as bad guy support to star Jean Gabin in the crime thriller Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) [Grisbi]. Gabin was impressed and did more than just encourage Lino to pursue acting as a living. Lino went on to appear with Gabin in several of the star's subsequent movies, often playing a gangster, including Razzia (1955) [Razzia], Crime and Punishment (1956), Speaking of Murder (1957) [Crime and Punishment] and Inspector Maigret (1958) [Inspector Maigret].
A tough, brutish, burly-framed presence, Lino came into his own as a tough-nut character star in the 1960s playing both sides of the moral fence. Adept in both light comedy and dark-edged drama, he appeared in scores of films now considered classic French cinema. His homely, craggy-looking mug took the form of various criminals types as in Second Wind (1966) [Second Breath] and Happy New Year (1973) [Happy New Year], as well as dogged, good-guy inspectors in The French Detective (1975) [The French Detective], Illustrious Corpses (1976) [Illustrious Corpses'], and The Grilling (1981). Lino bore a patented weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders countenance that audiences sympathized with, even when playing the arch-villain. Over the course of three decades he built up an impressive gallery of blue-collar protagonists. Not to be missed are his embittered, vengeful husband in Witness in the City (1959) [Witness in the City]; corrupt police chief Tiger Brown in Three Penny Opera (1963) [The Threepenny Opera]; a WWII French Resistance fighter in Army of Shadows (1969) [Army in the Shadows]; and Mafia boss Vito Genovese in Charles Bronson's The Valachi Papers (1972), among many, many others. Toward the end of his career he played Jean Valjean in a French production of Les Misérables (1982) for which he received a Cesar award nomination (i.e, the French "Oscar"). He performed practically until the time of his fatal heart attack in 1987 at age 68 in his beloved France. Survivors included his wife of 45 years and children. Daughter Mylene died in a plane crash in 1998 and wife Odette died in 2013.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
French actress and model Eva Gaëlle Green was born on July 6, 1980, in Paris, France. Her father, Walter Green, is a dentist who appeared in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar (1966). Her mother, Marlène Jobert, is an actress turned children's book writer. Eva's mother was born in Algeria, of French, Spanish, and Sephardic Jewish heritage (during that time, Algeria was part of France), and Eva's father is of Swedish, French, and Breton descent. She has a fraternal twin sister, Joy. Eva left French school at 17. She switched to the American School in France for one year. She left the American School and studied acting at Saint Paul Drama School in Paris for three years, then had a 10-week polishing course at the Weber Douglas Academy of dramatic Art in London. She returned to Paris as an accomplished young actress, and played on stage in several theater productions: "La Jalousie en Trois Fax" and "Turcaret". There, she caught the eye of director Bernardo Bertolucci. Green followed a recommendation to work on her English. She studied for two months with an English coach before doing The Dreamers (2003) with Bernardo Bertolucci. During their work, Bertolucci described Green as being "so beautiful it's indecent".
Green won critical acclaim for her role in The Dreamers (2003). After "The Dreamers", Green played the love interest of cult French gentleman-thief, Arsène Lupin (2004), opposite Romain Duris. In 2005, she co-starred, opposite Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson, in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), produced and directed by Ridley Scott. The film brought her a wider international exposure. She turned down the femme fatale role in The Black Dahlia (2006), that went to Hilary Swank, because she didn't want to end up typecast after her role in "The Dreamers". Instead, Eva accepted the prestigious role of "Vesper Lynd", one of three Bond girls, opposite Daniel Craig, in Casino Royale (2006) and became the fifth French actress to play a James Bond girl, after Claudine Auger in Thunderball (1965), Corinne Cléry in Moonraker (1979), Carole Bouquet in For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Sophie Marceau in The World Is Not Enough (1999). She achieved international recognition for the film, one of the highest-grossing Bond movies ever.
Since then, Green has starred in the films Dark Shadows (2012), 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014), and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). She also starred as Vanessa Ives in Showtime's horror drama Penny Dreadful (2014). Her performance in the series earned her a nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series - Drama at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards.
Since her school years, Green has been a cosmopolitan multilingual and multicultural person. Yet, since her father always lived in France with them and her mother, she and her twin sister can't speak Swedish. She developed a wide scope of interests beyond her acting profession and became an aspiring art connoisseur and an avid museum visitor. Her other activities, outside of acting, include playing and composing music, cooking at home, walking her terrier, and collecting art. She shares time between her two residencies, one is in Paris, France, and one in London, England.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Sophie Marceau was born Sophie Danièle Sylvie Maupu in Paris, France, to Simone (Morisset), a shop assistant, and Benoît Maupu, a truck driver. She grew up far from the studio spotlights. When she was 14 she was living in the Paris suburb of Gentilly with her father. She learned from friends that director Claude Pinoteau was looking for new faces for a movie about teenagers called The Party (1980). She auditioned for the role, got it, and the film was a success. She played in The Party 2 (1982), then bought back her contract with Gaumont when she was 16 years old for one million French francs. She is a critically acclaimed actress, having received the Cesar for Best Feminine Hope for "La Boum 2" in 1983. She was elected Romantic actress for Chouans! (1988) at the Festival International du Film Romantique (International Festival of Romantic Movie) of Cabourg in 1988, and was awarded the Moliere of the Best Theatrical Revelation for "Eurydice et Pygmalion" in 1994.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Academy Award-winning actress Marion Cotillard was born on September 30, 1975 in Paris. Cotillard is the daughter of Jean-Claude Cotillard, an actor, playwright and director, and Niseema Theillaud, an actress and drama teacher. Her father's family is from Brittany.
Raised in Orléans, France, she made her acting debut as a child with a role in one of her father's plays. She studied drama at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Orléans. After small appearances and performances in theater, Cotillard had occasional and minor roles in TV series such as Highlander (1992) and Extrême limite (1994), but her career as a film actress began in the mid-1990s. While still a teenager, Cotillard made her cinema debut at the age of 18 in the film L'histoire du garçon qui voulait qu'on l'embrasse (1994), and had small but noticeable roles in films such as Arnaud Desplechin's My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument (1996) and Coline Serreau's comedy The Green Planet (1996).
In 1996, she had her first lead role in the TV film Chloé (1996), playing the title role - a teenage runaway who is forced into prostitution. Cotillard co-starred opposite Anna Karina, the muse of the Nouvelle Vague.
In 1997, she won her first film award at the Festival Rencontres Cinématographiques d'Istres in France, for her performance as the young imprisoned Nathalie in the short film Affaire classée (1997). Her first prominent screen role was Lilly Bertineau in Gérard Pirès's box-office hit Taxi (1998), a role which she reprised in two sequels: Taxi 2 (2000) and Taxi 3 (2003), this role earned her first César award nomination (France's equivalent to the Oscar) for Most Promising Actress in 1999.
In 1999, Cotillard starred as Julie Bonzon in the Swiss war drama War in the Highlands (1998). For her performance in the film, she won the Best Actress award at the Autrans Film Festival in France. In 2001, Marion starred in Pretty Things (2001) as the twin sisters Marie and Lucie, and was nominated for her second César award for Most Promising Actress.
Cotillard's breakthrough in France came in 2003, when she starred in Yann Samuell's dark romantic comedy Love Me If You Dare (2003), in which she played Sophie Kowalsky, the daughter of Polish immigrants who lives a love-hate relationship with her childhood friend. The film was a box-office hit in France, became a cult film abroad and led Cotillard to bigger projects.
Her first Hollywood movie was Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), in which she played Joséphine, the wife of William Bloom (played by Billy Crudup). A few years later, Marion starred in Ridley Scott's A Good Year (2006) playing Fanny Chenal, a French café owner who falls in love with Russell Crowe's character. In 2004, she won the Chopard Thophy of Female Revelation at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Cotillard won the César award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance of Tina Lombardi in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement (2004).
In 2007, Cotillard received international recognition for her iconic portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007). Director Olivier Dahan cast Cotillard to play the legendary French singer because to him, her eyes were like those of "Piaf". The fact that she can sing also helped Cotillard land the role of "Piaf", although most of the singing in the film is that of Piaf's. The role won Cotillard the Academy Award for Best Actress along with a César, a Lumière Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe. That made her only the second actress to win an acting Oscar performing in a language other than English next to Sophia Loren (Two Women (1960)). Only two male performers (Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful (1997) and Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part II (1974)) have won an Oscar for solely non-English parts. Trevor Nunn called her portrayal of "Piaf" "one of the greatest performances on film ever". At the Berlin International Film Festival, where the film premiered, Cotillard was given a 15-minute standing ovation. When she won the César, Alain Delon presented the award and announced the winner as "La Môme Marion" (The Kid Marion), he also praised her at the stage saying: "Marion, I give you this César. I think this César is for a great great actress, and I know what I'm talking about".
Cotillard has worked much more frequently in English-language movies following her Academy Award recognition. In 2009, she acted opposite Johnny Depp in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009), and later that year played Luisa Contini in Rob Marshall's musical Nine (2009) and received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance. Time magazine ranked her as the fifth best performance by a female in 2009. The following year, she took on the main antagonist role, Mal, in Christopher Nolan's Inception (2010), and in 2011 she had memorable parts in Midnight in Paris (2011) and Contagion (2011) and reteamed with Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
In 2011 and 2012 respectively, Cotillard appeared on the top of Le Figaro's list of the highest paid actors in France, it was the first time in nine years that a female topped the list. Cotillard was also the highest paid foreign actress in Hollywood.
In 2012, Cotillard received wide-spread critical acclaim for her role as the legless orca trainer Stéphanie in Rust and Bone (2012). The film was a box office hit in France and received a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening at the 65th Cannes Film Festival. Cotillard won the Globe de Cristal (France's equivalent to the Golden Globe), the Étoile d'Or award and was nominated for the Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA, Critics' Choice and César Awards for her performance in the film. Cate Blanchett wrote an op-ed for Variety praising Cotillard's performance in "Rust and Bone", the two actresses competed for the Academy Awards for Best Actress in 2008, Cate was nominated for her performance in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) and Marion for her performance in La Vie En Rose (2007) and Cotillard won the Oscar.
She had her first leading role in an American movie in 2013, in James Gray's The Immigrant (2013), in which she played Ewa Cybulska, a Polish immigrant who wants to experience the American dream. Cotillard received wide-spread acclaim for her performance in the film at the 66th Cannes Film Festival, where the film premiered, and also won several critics awards. In 2014, Cotillard played Sandra in the Belgian film Two Days, One Night (2014) by the Dardenne brothers. Her performance was unanimously praised at the 67th Cannes Film Festival, earned several critics awards, Cotillard won her first European Award for Best Actress and also received her second Oscar nomination and her sixth César award nomination.
In 2015, she played Lady Macbeth opposite Michael Fassbender in Justin Kurzel's Macbeth (2015) and voiced two animated movies: The Little Prince (2015) in which she voiced The Rose, and April and the Extraordinary World (2015), in which she voiced the lead role, Avril. Her 2016 included Nicole Garcia's From the Land of the Moon (2016), Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World (2016), Justin Kurzel's Assassin's Creed (2016), in which she worked again with her Macbeth co-star Michael Fassbender; and Robert Zemeckis's Allied (2016), with Brad Pitt.- Actress
- Producer
- Talent Agent
Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parents Renée Simonot and Maurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, until Roger Vadim gave her a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (1963). Her breakthrough came with the excellent musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), in which she gave an unforgettable performance as a romantic middle-class girl who falls in love with a young soldier but gets imprisoned in a loveless marriage with another man; the director was the gifted Jacques Demy, who also cast Deneuve in the less successful The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). She then played a schizophrenic killer in Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965) and a married woman who works as a part-time prostitute every afternoon in Luis Buñuel's masterpiece Belle de Jour (1967). She also worked with Buñuel in Tristana (1970) and gave a great performance for François Truffaut in Mississippi Mermaid (1969), a kind of apotheosis of her "frigid femme fatale" persona. In the seventies she didn't find parts of that caliber, but her magnificent work in Truffaut's The Last Metro (1980) as a stage actress in Nazi-occupied Paris revived her career. She was also very good in the epic drama Indochine (1992), for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination (Best Actress). Although the elegant and always radiant Deneuve has never appeared on stage, she is universally hailed as one of the "grandes dames" of French cinema, joining a list that includes such illustrious talents as Simone Signoret, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert, Isabelle Adjani and the younger Juliette Binoche.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Mélanie Laurent was born in Paris, France. She is the daughter of Annick, a ballet teacher, and Pierre, a voice actor, who is most recognized for the French version of The Simpsons (1989). She has a younger brother, Mathieu, and has both Sephardi Jewish (from Tunisia) and Ashkenazi Jewish (from Poland) ancestry. In 1998, Laurent was visiting the set of Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (1999) with a friend when she caught the attention of Gérard Depardieu. He offered her a role in his next film The Bridge (1999). She only played a small role, but it was enough to further Mélanie's interest in acting.- The face of Simone Signoret on the Paris Metro movie posters in March 1982 looked even older than her 61 years. She was still a box-office draw, but the film L'étoile du Nord (1982) would be her last theatrical release; she played the landlady. Signoret had a long film apprenticeship during World War II, mostly as an extra and occasionally getting to speak a single line. She worked without an official permit during the Nazi occupation of France because her father, who had fled to England, was Jewish. Working almost all the time, she made enough as an extra to support her mother and three younger brothers. Her breakthrough to international stardom came when she was 38 with the British film Room at the Top (1958). Her Alice Aisgill, an unhappily-married woman who hopes she has found true love, radiated real warmth in all of her scenes--not just the bedroom scenes. She was the same woman as Dedee, a prostitute who finds true love in Dédée d'Anvers (1948), a film directed by Signoret's first husband, Yves Allégret, a decade earlier. Hollywood beckoned throughout the 1950s, but both Signoret and her second husband, Yves Montand, were refused visas to enter the United States; their progressive political activities did not sit well with the ultra-conservative McCarthy-era mentality that gripped the US at the time. They got visas in 1960 so Montand, a singer, could perform in New York and San Francisco. They were in Los Angeles in March 1960 when Signoret received the Oscar for best actress and stayed on so Montand could play opposite Marilyn Monroe in Let's Make Love (1960). The Signoret film that is shown most often on TV and got a theatrical re-release in 1995, four decades after it was made is the French thriller Diabolique (1955). The chilly character Signoret plays is proof of her acting ability. More typical of her person is the countess in Ship of Fools (1965), a film that also starred Vivien Leigh ,which more than doubled its chances of being in a video-store or library film collection.
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Blue-eyed Vincent Cassel was born in Paris to a leading actor father, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and a journalist mother, Sabine Litique. Often labeled as a tough guy because of his roles, eclectic choices and talent have made of him a star of European cinema. First in La haine (1995), the young actor, actually coming from upper classes, succeeded to express the despair of a social class living in the suburbs of towns. This veracity in his play comes from the fact that he was in fact since years in connection with many hip-hop artists from the rising generation, (his own brother was leader of a legendary french rap group). Then the success of The Crimson Rivers (2000), where he plays a young French cop alongside Jean Reno, made of him "the man to count on." He never hid his taste for rap music, break dance, Capoeira, Brasil and his endless energy, but Vincent is also a family man, married to Monica Bellucci, his Italian co-star from The Apartment (1996) (aka The Apartment); and recently a father.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Born 1930 in Piolenc in south France as son of a wealthy industrialist. Studied law in Aix-en-Provence. Started theatrical acting in 1950, but was regarded untalented at first, until Roger Vadim discovered him for the movies. When the press stalked him 1956 because of rumors of an affair with Brigitte Bardot his partner in ...And God Created Woman (1956), he fled into the army. Ten years later he had his first big success with A Man and a Woman (1966). Since then he has starred in more than 100 movies, with a special talent for the dark characters like murderers or jealous husbands. In his late career he preferred theater to movies.- Actor
- Soundtrack
François Cluzet was born on 21 September 1955 in Paris, France. He is an actor, known for The Intouchables (2011), Tell No One (2006) and French Kiss (1995). He has been married to Narjiss Slaoui-Falcoz since 2011. He was previously married to Chantal Perrin.- French actress Bérénice Marlohe first came to international attention when she was cast as the glamorous and enigmatic Severine in the twenty-third Bond film Skyfall (2012), alongside Daniel Craig which grossed over 1.11 billion dollars worldwide. Marlohe will continue to expand her presence in the States on the silver screen. In 2015 she starred in writer-director Victor Levin's romantic dramedy 5 to 7 (2014), which had its world premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival. Marlohe stars opposite Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) as an aspiring novelist in New York who has a 5-to-7 affair with the wife of a French diplomat (Bérénice Marlohe). IFC released the film in April 2015. This year , Bérénice wrapped on Tim Smit's "Redivider" and Lech Majewski's Valley of the Gods (2019) where she appears alongside Josh Hartnett, Charlotte Rampling and John Malkovich. In 2017 Bérénice will appear in both Joe Miale's sci-fi thriller Revolt (2017) opposite Lee Pace and Terrence Malick's "Weightless" alongside an amazing ensemble cast that includes Christian Bale, Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. She will also appear in David Lynch's Twin Peaks (2017) alongside Naomi Watts, Laura Dern and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Bérénice Marlohe was born in Paris, France and is of French, Chinese and Cambodian descent .
- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
French actress Léa Seydoux was born in 1985 in Paris, France, to Valérie Schlumberger, a philanthropist, and Henri Seydoux, a businessman. Her grandfather, Jérôme Seydoux, is chairman of Pathé, and her father is a great-grandson of businessman and inventor Marcel Schlumberger (her mother also descends from the Schlumberger family). Her parents are both of mixed French and Alsatian German descent, with more distant Venezuelan (Spanish, Basque) roots on her father's side.
Léa began her acting career in French cinema, appearing in films such as The Last Mistress (2007) and On War (2008). She first came to attention after she received her first César Award nomination for her performance in The Beautiful Person (2008), and won the Trophée Chopard, an award given to promising actors at the Cannes Film Festival. Since then, she has appeared in major Hollywood films including Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010), Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). In French cinema, she was nominated for the César Award for Most Promising Actress for a second time for her role in Belle Épine (2010) and was nominated for the César Award for Best Actress for the film Farewell, My Queen (2012).
In 2013, Seydoux came to widespread attention when Seydoux and co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos, alongside director Abdellatif Kechiche, were awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, for their involvement in the critically acclaimed film Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013)). As a special prize for their roles, Along with Jane Campion, Seydoux and Exarchopoulos are the only women to have ever won a Palme d'Or.
That same year, she also received the Lumières Award for Best Actress for the film Grand Central and, in 2014, she was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and starred in the films Beauty and the Beast, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Saint Laurent. In 2015 she played Madeleine Swann in the 24th James Bond film Spectre.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born in Gennevilliers, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb of Paris, to Emma Augusta "Gusti" (Schweinberger) and Mohammed Adjani. Her father was a Kabyle Algerian, from Iferhounène, and her mother was a Bavarian German. She grew up speaking German fluently. After winning a school recitation contest, she began acting in amateur theater by the age of twelve. At the age of 14, she starred in her first motion picture, Le Petit Bougnat (1970). Adjani has appeared in 30 films since 1970. She holds the record for most César Award for Best Actress (5), which she won for Possession (1981), One Deadly Summer (1983) (aka "One Deadly Summer"), Camille Claudel (1988), Queen Margot (1994) (aka "Queen Margot") and Skirt Day (2008) (aka "Skirt Day"). She was also given a double Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award in 1981. She also received two Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. She performs in French, English, Italian and German. Adjani was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 2010.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Omar Sy was born on 20 January 1978 in Trappes, Yvelines, France. He is an actor and producer, known for The Intouchables (2011), Jurassic World (2015) and X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). He has been married to Hélène Sy since 6 July 2007. They have four children.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Tahar Rahim was born on 4 July 1981 in Belfort, Territoire de Belfort, France. He is an actor, known for A Prophet (2009), The Mauritanian (2021) and The Past (2013). He has been married to Leïla Bekhti since 2010.- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
The son of the renowned French sculptor Paul Belmondo, he studied at Conservatoire National Superieur d'Art Dramatique (CNSAD); after the minor stage performances he made his screen debut in À pied, à cheval et en voiture (1957) but the episodes with his participation were cut before release. However, the breakthrough role in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) made him one of the key figures in the French New Wave. Since mid-60s he completely switched to commercial mainstream pictures and became a big comedy and action star in France. Following the example of Alain Delon he founded his own production company Cerito named after his grandmother's maiden name. In 1989 he was awarded Cesar for his performance in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988) . Recently he returned to stage performing in the Théâtre Marigny, Paris, notably as Edmund Kean or Cyrano de Bergerac. He still appears in the movies but not so often as before preferring mostly dramatic roles. The president of France distinguished him with order of Legion of Honour. Belmondo had three children with his first spouse Elodie Constant: Patricia Belmondo ( who died in a fire in 1993), Florence Belmondo and Paul Belmondo. In 2003, he had another daughter, Stella Belmondo, with his second spouse Natty Belmondo. None of his children became actors though you could have seen his son Paul in an episodic role (the same as his father, at an earlier age) in Itinerary of a Spoiled Child (1988).- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Carole Bouquet is a French actress and fashion model. She is best known for played Bond girl Melina Havelock in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981).
She also starred in That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), Nemo (1984), The Bridge (1999) and Do Not Disturb (2014).
In 2017 she starred in the Mini-Series The Mantis.
In the 1980s and 1990s she was a model for Chanel.
That Obscure Object of Desire was her film debut.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Born in Pont-Audemer, France, Laetitia Casta spent her childhood in the lush countryside of Normandy. At age 15, she was approached by an agent of Paris' Madison Models while building sand castles on a beach in Corsica. After her father agreed to let the agency take some test photographs, Laetitia's wondrous natural beauty impressed the founder of Madison models as well as the director of the French magazine Elle. Modeling contracts ensued and in 1993 Laetitia signed on with Guess? Jeans for a very successful advertising campaign.
In 1996, Laetitia became one of the lead models of Victoria's Secret and from there was featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition for three consecutive years. She has appeared on over 100 covers of fashion magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour, as well as doing commercials for the cosmetics company L'Oreal. Laetitia made her feature film debut in Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (1999), the most expensive French film ever made and a smash hit in Europe. Her acting career gained momentum when she starred in the TV movie The Blue Bicycle (2000), set in WWII France.
Laetitia currently owns a flat in London and enjoys painting, writing, rollerblading, going to the cinema, and dancing in her spare time.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Certainly one of France's supreme farceurs in the classic tradition, comedian Pierre Richard was born to an upper crust family with an embarrassing riches of middle names as he was christened Pierre Richard Maurice Charles Leopold Defays. Working and building up his trade at the Paris Music Hall in the early years, he appeared in small movie roles throughout most of the 60s. In the 70s, however, he aimed his genius directly towards film and succeeded beyond the wildest expectations. Directing and co-writing many of his slapstick vehicles, his characters often have taken on an hilariously guileless persona and, coupled with his innate gift for klutzy physical comedy, have become an audience favorite for nearly four decades. His superior work in Distracted (1970) and The Troubles of Alfred (1972) was immediately recognized and this led to the international crossover hit The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972) in which Richard played a naive, innocent concert musician plucked by chance to become a superspy on a top secret mission. A potent association in the 1960s and 1970s with actor/producer/director Yves Robert and the 1980s with writer/director Francis Veber and actor Gérard Depardieu produced several comedy classics: Very Happy Alexander (1968), The Return of the Tall Blond Man (1974), La Chèvre (1981), The ComDads (1983) and The Fugitives (1986). Many of Richard's classic comedies, including The Toy (1976), have spawned Hollywood remakes and imitations, though most pale compared to the originals.