Jean-Paul Belmondo

Jean-Paul Belmondo — Biography

Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo was born on 9 April 1933 in Neuilly-sur-Seine and died at his home in Paris on 6 September 2021. His father, sculptor Paul Belmondo, was born in Algeria to a Sicilian-Piedmontese family; his mother, Madeleine Rainaud-Richard, was a painter, and his brother Alain went on to produce his films. As a young man he was drawn to boxing and football, winning all three of his amateur bouts by knockout, before training as an actor at the Paris Conservatoire; at his 1956 graduation show a sketch mocking the school cost him the top prize he had expected, and nearly caused a riot among his fellow students.

His performance in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 film Breathless made him a leading figure of the French New Wave, and French media affectionately nicknamed him "Bébel." He built a reputation for daring, tough-guy roles, performed his own stunts, and turned down Hollywood to never appear in an English-language film; from 1971 he also produced films through his own company. Alongside Louis de Funès and Alain Delon, he ranked among the era's top box-office draws, pulling in roughly 160 million admissions over five decades. He won the César for Best Actor in 1989 for Itinerary of a Spoiled Child but turned the award down, over the sculptor César's past treatment of his father's work. A stroke in 2001 kept him away from acting for years. He received an Honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2011 and Venice's Golden Lion in 2016; after his death, President Macron called him a national hero.