The star’s career choices were equally varied, from acclaimed art house films to critically-humorous action and comedy films later in his career.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of the iconic French New Wave film “Breathless”, whose crooked boxer nose and rough grin made him one of the country’s most recognizable leading men, has died. He was 88 years old.
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His lawyer Michelle Godest’s office confirmed his death on Monday. No cause of death was given.
Belmondo’s career completed a half-century. Belmondo, who embodied a new type of male star in the 1960s, characterized by pure masculinity rather than his classic good looks, went on to appear in more than 80 films and many prominent French men from François Truffaut to Claude Lelouch. Worked with directors.
His career choices were equally varied, from acclaimed art house films to seriously lukewarm action and comedy films later in his career.
His unorthodox appearance—flat nose, full lips, and muscular frame—allowed him to take on roles ranging from thug to police officer, thief to priest, Cyrano de Bergerac to an unassuming secret agent. Belmondo was also a talented athlete who often performed his own stunts.
French President Emmanuel Macron called the actor a “national treasure” while paying tribute to him on Twitter and Instagram, remembering his pain, his laughter and versatility. Macron wrote, he was at once an “excellent hero” and “a familiar figure”. “In him, we all recognize ourselves.”
France burst into Belmondo mode at the news of his death, with politicians of all stripes praising him as the media put the actor everyone loves center-stage. Old movie clips caught the athletic Belmondo in the heart-stopping acrobatics he was known to love, from sliding down a roof to climbing a rope ladder from a moving convertible.
Belmondo was born on April 9, 1933 in Neuly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, into an artistic family. His father was the famous sculptor Paul Belmondo and his mother, Sarah Renaud-Richard, was a painter.
Belmondo played football and trained as a boxer before leaving school at the age of 16. He starred at the Paris Conservatory in the 1950s, where one of his teachers, Pierre Dux, famously told him that his career as a leading man was doomed. His form According to biographer Bertrand Tessier, Ducks said that people would laugh if they saw an actress in Belmondo’s arms.
French theater critic Jean-Jacques Gautier was also not impressed, once he said: “Mr. Belmondo will never enjoy success with his ruffian mug.”
At her final conservatory competition, the jury failed to give her the recognition it thought she deserved—so she gave the judges an obscene parting gesture.
Starr began acting in small provincial theaters and in 1958 Paris was noticed by aspiring filmmaker Goddard, who asked him to appear in a short film. At first, Belmondo didn’t take Goddard seriously.
“I talked to my wife about it, and she said, ‘Go ahead. If (Goddard) bothers you, punch him,'” Belmondo told Liberation newspaper in 1999.
His first significant role was given to Belmondo by director Claude Sotte in “Klasse tus Riske” (Consider All Risks), in which he starred alongside Lino Ventura in 1960. That same year, Goddard recalled Belmondo to appear in “Breathless” – which became one of the breakthrough films of the French New Wave. The movement, which included Truffaut, grouped filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s who abandoned traditional narrative techniques and were known for youthful iconoclasm moods.
Belmondo starred alongside American actress Jean Seberg, who appeared as the street-smart aspiring reporter who, in the film’s pivotal moment, sold it to the International Herald Tribune on the Champs-lysées in Paris.
Belmondo sometimes stated that he starred in Goddard’s first film and would star in his last. But he didn’t tie his name to one director in particular and worked with most of France’s top filmmakers—and many of Europe’s best-known actresses, including Jeanne Morrow and Sophia Loren.
After the huge success of “Breatheless”, Belmondo showed his vast range of talent and his versatility in plays (“Léon Morin, Pretre”), arthouse films (“Modrato Cantabile”) and blockbusters (“Cartouche”).
In “Un sing en hivre”, a 1962 French classic directed by Henri Verneuil, Belmondo influenced the great Jean Gabin.
“You won’t tell me anymore: ‘I wish I had a young Gabin.’ You have that!” Gabin told the director of Belmondo.
In Truffaut’s 1969 “Mississippi Mermaid,” Belmondo played a tobacco farmer and starred alongside Catherine Deneuve. Belmondo and Danish-born Anna Karina played a couple in Goddard’s 1965 “Pierrot Le Fu.” Belmondo also won the French equivalent of the Oscar – Caesar – for his role in Lelouch’s 1988 film “Itinary of a Spoiled Child”, his final major success.
During the second half of his career, Belmondo opted for high-paying roles in commercially successful action films. He played a tough spy in “Cop or Hooligan” and a World War II ace in “Champion of Champions”.
Belmondo returned to the stage in the 1980s, his first love, and won back skeptical critics. His comeback role was in the 1987 Paris production “Keane”, about an actor who was renowned for his uncontrollable nature and talent.
Belmondo, who recovered from a stroke in 2001, has three children together, Florence, Paul and Stella Eva Angelina. Another daughter, Patricia, died in 1994.
Funeral arrangements were not immediately known.
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