Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo

Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the son of renowned sculptor Paul Belmondo. An amateur boxer in his youth with a trademark broken nose, Belmondo studied at the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique in Paris, where traditional teachers doubted he had the looks for a leading man.

In 1960, Jean-Luc Godard cast Belmondo as the rebellious, Humphrey Bogart-obsessed petty criminal Michel Poiccard in Breathless (À bout de souffle). Belmondo's insolent swagger, cigarettes, and natural charisma turned him into the embodiment of modern cool and the poster boy of the French New Wave. He starred in Godard's Pierrot le Fou, Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid, and Jean-Pierre Melville's crime masterpieces Léon Morin, Priest and Le Doulos. In the 1970s and 1980s, Bébel transformed into France's supreme action hero in Le Magnifique, Le Professionnel, and L'As des as, famously performing all his own death-defying helicopter and rooftop stunts without a double. In 2011, Cannes awarded him an honorary Palme d'Or, and France honored him with a national state funeral at the Invalides.