(1933- )
Actor and producer. Jean-Paul Belmondo is an internationally recognized film celebrity and an icon of the French Nouvelle Vague or New Wave. He once aspired to a career in boxing before turning to acting at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique in Paris from 1952 to 1956. He debuted in film in the 1956 short Molière, by Norbert Tildian. In 1957, he began his career in feature-length films such as Henri Aisner's Les copains du dimanche and Maurice Belbez's À pied, à cheval, et en voiture. He later played memorable roles for Marc Allégret in Sois belle et tais-toi (1958), where he worked alongside fellow icon Alain Delon for the first time. He also appeared in Allégret's Un drôle de dimanche (1958).
Belmondo subsequently landed a supporting role in Marcel Carné's drama Les Tricheurs (1958). He went on to work with Jean-Luc Godard in the short Charlotte et son Jules (1958), then launched into stardom through his portrayal of the internationally famous character Michel Poiccard in Godard's benchmark New Wave film, A bout de souffle (1960). He worked with New Wave directors on several important films: Claude Chabrol's A double tour (1959) and Docteur Popaul (1972), Godard's Une femme est une femme (1961) and Pierrot le fou (1965), and François Truffaut's La Sirène du Mississipi (1969). He also costarred with one of the New Wave's most prominent actresses, Jeanne Moreau, in Marcel Ophiils's Peau de banane (1963). Belmondo developed a film persona that seemed to embody the insouciant, rebellious, cinematic antihero of the 1960s. The term "Belmondo style" immediately recalls this image. Indeed, Belmondo's face is displayed on the cover of several books about film.
Belmondo's celebrity stretches beyond his status as a New Wave icon. He played eclectic roles in both art and commercial cinema. In the 1960s and up until the mid-1980s, he was one of France's biggest box-office attractions, often starring in thrillers like Claude Sautet's Classe tous riques (1960), Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Doulos (1962), Jacques Deray's Borsalino (alongside Alain Delon), and Georges Lautner's Le Professionel (1981). He frequently led in comedy-adventure films such as Phillipe de Broca's Cartouche (1962) and L'Homme de Rio (1964), Gérard Oury's Le cerveau (1968) and L 'As des as (1982), Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Les Mariés de l'an II (1971), and Deray's Le solitaire (1987). He was also featured in parodies of spy films, including the cosmopolitan James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) and de Broca's Le Magnifique (1973). His range was further demonstrated in his roles as a priest in Melville's Léon Morin: Prêtre (1961), a Resistance fighter in René Clement's war drama Paris Brûle-t-il? (1966), and as Henri Fortin in Claude Lelouch's Les Miserables (1995), a loose adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic novel. He paired up with Delon again in Patrice Leconte's Une chance sur deux (1998), then starred in Cédric Klapisch's science-fiction film Peut-être (1999). He won a César in 1989 for Best Actor for his role in Claude Lelouch's Itinéraire d'un enfant gâté. In 2000, he played himself in Bertrand Blier's Les Acteurs, and starred again for de Broca in 2000 in the science-fiction film Amazone.
Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins
Guide to cinema. Academic. 2011.