Benoit Poelvoorde

A theater lover, Ben –as his closest friends call him– began by studying photography, although later fate led him to the cinema, where he has shone as an actor, but has also worked as a screenwriter.

Benoit Poelvoorde was born on September 22, 1964 in Namur, Belgium. He studied at the Félicien Rops Technical Institute, in Namur. Later, he decided to study graphic design at the Brussels School of Graphic Research. During his formative years he became friends with Remy Belvaux and André Bonzel, and it can be said that it was then that he began his acting career, since with them he made the short film Pas de C4 pour Daniel Daniel(1987) , very successful. After the triumph, the three friends decided to repeat their adventure with the feature film It Happened Close to His House (1992), without imagining that they would end up receiving the André Cavens Award for Best Film. It was a low budget film, inspired by the Belgian series Tease .

During the following years, Benoit Poelvoorde starred in several Canal+ series and French-produced films, which made him famous both in Belgium and in France: Pour rire! (1996), Les voleurs de patates (1996), C omme une bumpe sans clarines (1996), Les randonneurs (1997), among many others. In 2001, he starred in the film Ghislain Lambert’s Bike , a comedy about one of the actor’s passions, the bicycle. But it was with the film Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) where he became known to the general public with the role of Brutus. In this same year, he also starred in the comedies Louise-Michel and Guerra de misses .

After a brief pause in his acting career, as a depression kept him hospitalized in his hometown, he resumed his work with the film Coco, from rebellion to the legend of Chanel (2009), where he played Baron Balsan, one of the loves of the protagonist Gabrielle Chanel. The following year, he worked on one of his best films, Shy Anonymous (2010), a nice comedy by Jean-Pierre Améris that tells the story of an unusual couple and the difficulty they have in relating.

In Nothing to Declare  (2011), a film directed by Dany Boon , her performance was criticized to some extent for being too delirious, although it was a very funny comedy. On the contrary, in 3 hearts  (2015) Benoit fits perfectly with the role of Marc, a tax inspector who for work reasons cannot meet Sylvie, a woman who seems to be his soul mate. The following year, he escaped his comedic role to play Eddy in the original drama The Price of Fame , directed by Xavier Beauvois . One of his most vaunted films is The New New Testament (2015), an outlandish comedy whose script doesn’t quite work.

Although his filmography is still somewhat uneven, there is no doubt that this actor has a special talent for making people laugh. Throughout his career he has received different awards for his work: the Jean Gabin Award for young talent in 2002 and the Audience Award at the Magritte Awards in 2011. And in addition to having acted in more than 50 films, he has also been a screenwriter. in four of them: Pas de C4 pour Daniel Daniel (1987), Ocurió cerca de su casa (1992), Les gates de la gloria (2001) and La bici de Ghislain Lambert (2001).