Jean-Paul Belmondo

French actor hailed as cinema's new anti-hero in 1957, an overnight success in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (A Bout de Souffle, 1960), followed by such well-known films as That Man from Rio (1964), and Pierrot le Fou (1965). A former boxer, he had rough features including a broken nose, a rakish grin and gruff sex appeal. His films are mainly semi-serious adventures where he plays a good humored criminal or carefree blackguard. One of France's leading box office attractions for over 30 years, he performed in films that ranged from avant-garde classics to popular action-packed thrillers.

Born into an aristocratic family and the son of a well known sculptor, Belmondo attended fancy private schools and studied drama at the Paris Conservatory, where he met with early success.

He dangled from a helicopter over Paris, crawled across the roof of a moving subway car in pursuit of a murderer and frolicked with a Bengal tiger. He felt that none of these feats compared to his return to the stage in 1987 for causing sheer terror. On 3 March 1987, Kean, a five-act play, opened in Paris. "I could have died with my legend," he said, "but I wanted to take a risk, prove myself, hear my own fears and conquer them."

In later years, Belmondo's reputation suffered due to taking more commercially successful, high-paying action roles in such films as Cop or Holligan (1979) and Champion of Champions (1982). His theater comeback was therefore the biggest cultural event of the season, covered voluminously by the media. He suffered a stroke in 2001 and was absent from the stage and the screen until 2009 when he appeared in Un homme et son chien (A man and his dog).

In 1953, Belmondo married Élodie Constantin, with whom he had three children: Patricia (1958), Florence (1960) and Paul (1963). Paul became a Formula One driver; his eldest daughter Patricia was killed in a fire in 1994.