Rémy Julienne

Rémy Julienne — Biography

Rémy Julienne is among the best-known car stunt performers and stunt coordinators in film history. His scientific approach to chase sequences made him the man behind striking images in the years before computer modelling. He is remembered for the car stunts in six James Bond films and for the Mini chase in The Italian Job, and he later opened a school in France to train stunt drivers and mechanics.

It began with motorcycles. The son of café owners in Cepoy, he became French motocross champion in the second half of the 1950s, which brought him to the attention of stunt coordinator Gil Delamare. He entered films in 1964 by replacing Jean Marais on Fantômas. When Delamare died during a stunt in 1966, Julienne took on the contracts he had signed; after making his name in French comedies such as Papaz Kaçtı and Dracula and Son, he made ordinary cars do extraordinary things in the Bond films directed by John Glen: the Citroën 2CV in For Your Eyes Only, the petrol tanker in Licence to Kill.

He worked on more than 1,400 productions, including commercials for Renault, Citroën and Fiat, coordinated a stunt show at Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris, and was made an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters. A 1999 accident during the filming of Taxi 2 killed a cameraman; a court first held him responsible and the appeal court changed the ruling in 2009. His sons Michel and Dominique carry on the family business. Julienne died of COVID-19 on 21 January 2021.