François Cluzet

Biography: life and films

François Cluzet was born in Paris on 21st September 1955, the son of a newspaper vendor. As a teenager, he sang in rock groups, but he made up his mind to become an actor after he saw Jacques Brel perform in a stage production of L'Homme de la Mancha. He left school at 17 to study drama, first at the Cours Simon. Having begun his career on stage, he appeared in a few films for television. Diane Kurys then gave him his first screen role in her second feature Cocktail Molotov (1980). Immediately after this he had a substantial part in Le Cheval d'orgueil (1980), directed by Claude Chabrol, who would employ him on several of his subsequent films, notably Une affaire de femmes (1988) and L'Enfer (1994).

It was in 1983 that Cluzet's potential as a screen actor of the first rank was first recognised, through his performances in Jean Becker's L'Été meurtrier (1983) and Gérard Mordillat's Vive la sociale! (1983), which won him the Prix Jean-Gabin and two César nominations (one for Best Supporting Actor, the other for Most Promising Actor) in 1984. This is the point at which Cluzet's acting career took off. He had no difficulty attracting offers of work from some of France's most talented auteur filmmakers, from promising debutants like Claire Denis (Chocolat, 1988) to old hands such as Bertrand Tavernier ('Round Midnight, 1986) and Bertrand Blier (Trop belle pour toi, 1989). He was comfortable playing alongside other high profile actors, such as Patrick Bruel in Pierre Jolivet's Force majeure (1989) and Gérard Depardieu in Claude Zidi's Deux (1989). It was in an unlikely partnership with Depardieu's son Guillaume that Cluzet demonstrated a surprising flair for comedy, in Pierre Salvadori's Les Apprentis (1995), whilst his penchant for playing tormented loners is powerfully revealed in Olivier Assayas's Fin août, début septembre (1998).

The genre with which François Cluzet is perhaps most associated is the classic French thriller. His brooding screen presence and subtle aura of vulnerability ensure he is well-suited to the dusky, labyrinthine world of the polar, demonstrated by his standout performance in Guillaume Canet's Ne le dis à personne (2006), the film that won Cluzet his first Best Actor César. He subsequently starred alongside Canet in Jacques Maillot's realist gangster film Les Liens du sang (2008) and was chillingly at ease in the role of real-life bank robber Toni Musulin in Philippe Godeau's 11.6 (2013). Before this, Goddeau gave Cluzet one of his more memorable roles in Le Dernier pour la route (2009), in which he portrayed a man struggling with alcoholism with harrowing conviction. In 2011, Cluzet starred in the year's biggest hit, Intouchables (2011), a mainstream comedy in which he played a paralysed man regaining his zest for living. Not only did this film, a worldwide hit, raise Cluzet's international profile considerably, it also secured his standing as one of France's most respected and best-loved actors.

Filmography

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