Jean Paul Belmondo

Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine (France), on April 9, 1933, Jean-Paul Belmondo is the son of the renowned Parisian sculptor of Italian descent Paul Belmondo and the painter Madeline Rainaud-Richard. He has two brothers, the film producer Alain Belmondo and the dancer Muriel. He was not a good student, he had constant problems in the different schools he attended, and he was more interested in sports than in books, which is why he ended up becoming an amateur boxer in his youth. He ended up with a broken nose, which over time has been known to explode in tough-guy roles.

Later he was attracted to acting, and he entered the Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris. She did some theater before making her big screen debut in On Foot, on Horseback and in a Car , although all of her scenes stayed on the editing table.

His career began to take off when he became a “muse” of the Nouvelle Vague. He took part in A Double Life , by Claude Chabrol , and later in one of the emblematic titles of the movement, At the End of the Escape , by Jean-Luc Godard , together with Jean Seberg . He played a criminal who is reunited with the girl he was in love with. With his innovative style, he revolutionized cinema and pointed the way for directors of the emerging movement.

Throughout the 1960s, Belmondo appeared in important films, such as Vittorio de Sica ‘s Two Women , François Truffaut ‘s The Mississippi Mermaid , Claude Satet’s At All Risks and Gérard Oury ‘s The Brain . He, too, once again placed himself under Godard’s orders, in A Woman is a Woman and Pierrot the Fool .

He repeated several times under the orders of Jean-Pierre Melville , with whom he shot the thrillers The Bodyguard (1963) and The Confidant , and the drama Leon Morin, prête , where he played a priest who fascinates a communist militant, during the German occupation. .

His prolific association with the filmmaker Philippe de Broca is also quite remarkable , with whom he exploited his athletic physique and his virtues for adventure and action cinema, in titles such as Cartouche , The Man from Rio , –which also included a lot of humor–, The tribulations of a Chinese in China – adaptation of the Jules Verne novel – How to destroy the most famous agent in the world , and The Incorrigible , which was their last collaboration.

In French cinema, Belmondo had only one rival: the handsome Alain Delon . When the two teamed up on the same film, the crime drama Borsalino , they blew up the box office. In Belmondo’s filmography, another thriller along the same lines also stands out, The Clan of the Marseillaises , with Claudia Cardinale .

Throughout the 1970s, Belmondo – who had formed his own company – became involved as a producer in his films, although he had a resounding commercial failure, Stavisky , by Alain Resnais , which made him distance himself from avant-garde cinema forever.

In the 1980s, he combined action films – with titles such as The Professional , Ace of Aces , or El imperio del león – with numerous performances in the theater, to which he has dedicated the last stage of his career almost exclusively. Even so, he had a lot of impact in France Exceptional Witness , a free version of Victor Hugo ‘s “Les Miserables” at the time of the Nazis, and he joined Alain Delon again in the comedy Uno de dos , by Patrice Leconte .

Divorced from Elodie Constantin, he was together with Natty Belmondo, who acted with him in Exceptional Witness , although he left her for the very young Barbara Gandolfi. The worst event in his life happened when Patricia, his eldest daughter, died in a fire in 1994.

Bébel is very loved in his country. Not only was he awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor by the President of the Republic, but he was also president of the Actors Union in the 1960s. The Cannes Festival has paid tribute to him by awarding him an honorary Palme d’Or.