Jean-Pierre Léaud
Encyclopedia

Early years

Born in Paris, Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel
Antoine Doinel
Antoine Doinel is a fictional character created by French film director François Truffaut. Doinel is to a great extent an alter ego for Truffaut, sharing many of the same childhood experiences, looking somewhat alike and even being mistaken for one another on the street.Although Truffaut did not...

, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

 François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...

, in The 400 Blows
The 400 Blows
The 400 Blows is a 1959 French film directed by François Truffaut. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. The story revolves around Antoine Doinel, an ordinary adolescent in Paris, who is thought by his parents and teachers...

.
To cast the two adolescents, Truffaut published an announcement in France-Soir and auditioned several hundred children in September and October 1958. Jean Domarchi, a critic at Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...

, had earlier recommended the son of an assistant scriptwriter, Pierre Léaud, and the actress Jacqueline Pierreux. Truffaut was immediately captivated by the fourteen-year-old adolescent, who had already appeared the previous year with Jean Marais in Georges Lampin's La Tour prende garde! He recognized traits they both shared, "for example a certain suffering with regard to the family...With, however, this fundamental difference: though we were both rebels, we hadn't expressed our rebellion in the same way. I preferred to cover up and lie. Jean-Pierre, on the contrary, seeks to hurt, shock and wants it to be known...Why? Because he's unruly, while I was sly. Because his excitability requires that things happen to him, and when they don't occur quickly enough, he provokes them."

Jean-Pierre Léaud, then in the eighth grade at a private school in Pontigny, was far from an ideal student. The director of the school wrote this to Truffaut, "I regret to inform you that Jean Pierre is more and more 'unmanageable'. Indifference, arrogance, permanent defiance, lack of discipline in all its forms. He has twice been caught leafing through pornographic pictures in the dorm. He is developing more and more into an emotionally disturbed case." But this unstable boy, who often ran away with the older students on their nights out, could also be brilliant, generous, and affectionate. Extremely cultured for his age, he was already very good at writing, and he even claimed to Truffaut that he had written a verse tragedy, Torquatus.

Acting career

Léaud starred in four more Truffaut films depicting the life of Doinel, spanning a period of 20 years — after the short-film Antoine et Colette in 1962 — beside actress Claude Jade
Claude Jade
Claude Marcelle Jorré, better known as Claude Jade , was a French actress, known for starring as Christine in François Truffaut's three films Stolen Kisses , Bed and Board and Love on the Run . Jade acted in theatre, film and television...

 as his girlfriend, and then wife, Christine. Those films are Stolen Kisses
Stolen Kisses
Stolen Kisses is a 1968 French film directed by François Truffaut. It continues the story of the character Antoine Doinel, whom Truffaut had previously depicted in The 400 Blows and the short film Antoine and Colette...

(1968), Bed & Board (1970) and Love on the Run
Love on the Run (1979 film)
Love on the Run is a 1979 French film directed by François Truffaut. It is Truffaut's fifth and final film about the character Antoine Doinel. A lot of the film is made of a "clip show" of the previous films in the series...

(1979). He also collaborated with Truffaut on non-Antoine Doinel films like Two English Girls
Two English Girls
Two English Girls , is a 1971 French romantic drama film directed by François Truffaut and based on a 1956 novel by Henri-Pierre Roché...

and La Nuit américaine and became the actor most commonly affiliated with him. Although Antoine Doinel is his most famous character, he often found his performances in other films to be compared to his Doinel character whether there were legitimate similarities or not.

He is one of the most visible and well-known actors to be associated with the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...

 film movement and, aside from his work with Truffaut, collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

 (9 films), Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache
Jean Eustache was a French filmmaker. During his short career, he completed numerous shorts, in addition to a pair of highly regarded features, of which the first, The Mother and the Whore, is considered a key work of post-Nouvelle Vague French cinema.In his obituary for Eustache, the influential...

, Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette
Jacques Rivette is a French film director. His most well known films include Celine and Julie Go Boating, La Belle Noiseuse and the cult film Out 1....

 and Agnes Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....

. 1973 was perhaps the peak of his professional career when he had three critically acclaimed films released: Truffaut's La Nuit américaine, Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...

and Eustache's The Mother and the Whore
The Mother and the Whore
The Mother and the Whore is a 1973 French film directed by Jean Eustache. Examing the relationship between three characters in a love triangle, it was Eustache's first feature film and is considered his masterpiece.-Plot:...

.

In 1966, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor
Silver Bear for Best Actor
The Silver Bear for Best Actor is the Berlin International Film Festival's award for achievement in performance by an actor.- Awards :- External links :*...

 at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival
16th Berlin International Film Festival
The 16th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from June 24 to July 5, 1966.-Jury:* Pierre Braunberger * Franz Seitz* Emilio Villalba Welsh* Khwaja Ahmad Abbas* Pier Paolo Pasolini* Lars Forssell* Hollis Alpert...

 for his role in Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....

's Masculin, féminin
Masculin, féminin
Masculin, féminin is a 1966 black-and-white French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard.The film stars French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a romantic young idealist and literary lion-wannabe who chases budding pop star, Madeleine...

. He was nominated for a César Award
César Award
The César Award is the national film award of France, first given out in 1975. The nominations are selected by the members of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinéma....

 for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for Les Keufs and was awarded and Honorary Cesar
Honorary César
The César Award is France's national film award. Recipients are selected by the members of the Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema. The following are the recipients of the honorary César award since 1976.- See also :**...

 for lifetime achievement in 2000.

Léaud acted in films by other influential directors, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...

, Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski
Jerzy Skolimowski is a Polish film director, screenwriter, dramatist and actor. A graduate of the prestigious National Film School in Łódź, Skolimowski has directed more than twenty films since his 1960 début Oko wykol...

, Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci is an Italian film director and screenwriter, whose films include The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Dreamers...

, Aki Kaurismäki
Aki Kaurismäki
-Career:After studying Media Studies at the University of Tampere, Aki Kaurismäki started his career as a co-director in the films of his elder brother Mika Kaurismäki. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment , Dostoyevsky's famous crime story set in modern-day Helsinki...

 and more recently Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas
Olivier Assayas is a French film director and screenwriter.He made his debut in 1986, after directing some short films and writing for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma.-Career:...

 and Tsai Ming-liang
Tsai Ming-liang
Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most celebrated "Second New Wave" film directors of Taiwanese Cinema, along with earlier contemporaries such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang...

. He appeared with a hero of his Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...

 in the Bertolucci film Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...

, although the two never met, since all of Léaud's scenes were shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays.

Filmography

  • La Tour, prends garde !
    La Tour, prends garde !
    La Tour, prends garde! is a French adventure drama film from 1958, directed by Georges Lampin, written by Claude Accursi, starring Jean Marais...

    (1958)
  • The 400 Blows
    The 400 Blows
    The 400 Blows is a 1959 French film directed by François Truffaut. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. The story revolves around Antoine Doinel, an ordinary adolescent in Paris, who is thought by his parents and teachers...

    (1959)
  • Testament of Orpheus
    Testament of Orpheus
    Testament of Orpheus is a 1960 film directed by and starring Jean Cocteau. It is considered the final part of the Orphic Trilogy, following The Blood of a Poet and Orphée...

    (French: Le Testament d'Orphée) (1960) (cameo)
  • Love at Twenty
    Love at Twenty
    Love at Twenty is a 1962 French-produced omnibus project of Pierre Roustang, consisting of five segments directed by five directors from five different countries...

    - (Antoine and Colette
    Antoine and Colette
    Antoine and Colette is the second film — a short — in François Truffaut's series about Antoine Doinel, the character he follows from boyhood to adulthood through five films...

     segment
    ) (1962)
  • Pierrot le fou
    Pierrot le fou
    Pierrot le fou is a 1965 French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard, starring Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film is based on Obsession, a novel by Lionel White. It was Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature film, released between Alphaville and Masculin, féminin...

    (1965) (cameo)
  • Alphaville (1965) (cameo)
  • Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus
    Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus
    Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus is a fifty minute film starring French nouvelle vague icon Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose character takes on a job dressing up as Santa Claus in order to save money for a stylish duffel coat...

    (1966)
  • Masculin, féminin
    Masculin, féminin
    Masculin, féminin is a 1966 black-and-white French film directed by Jean-Luc Godard.The film stars French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a romantic young idealist and literary lion-wannabe who chases budding pop star, Madeleine...

    (1966)
  • Made in USA (1966)
  • La Chinoise
    La Chinoise
    La Chinoise is a 1967 French political film directed by Jean-Luc Godard about young revolutionaries in Paris.-Plot summary:La Chinoise is a loose adaptation, if not parody, of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 1872 novel, The Possessed...

    (1967)
  • Week End (1967)
  • Le départ (1967)
  • Le Plus vieux métier du monde
    The Oldest Profession (film)
    The Oldest Profession is a 1967 French comedy film. It was directed by six different film directors, each one doing a segment on prostitution through the ages.-Cast:Prehistoric Era * Michèle Mercier – Brit...

    (segment: "Anticipation, ou: l'amour en l'an 2000") (1967)
  • Stolen Kisses
    Stolen Kisses
    Stolen Kisses is a 1968 French film directed by François Truffaut. It continues the story of the character Antoine Doinel, whom Truffaut had previously depicted in The 400 Blows and the short film Antoine and Colette...

    (1968)
  • Le gai savoir (1969)
  • Pigsty (1969)
  • Bed & Board (1970)
  • Two English Girls
    Two English Girls
    Two English Girls , is a 1971 French romantic drama film directed by François Truffaut and based on a 1956 novel by Henri-Pierre Roché...

    (1971)
  • Out 1
    Out 1
    Out 1 is a 1971 film directed by Jacques Rivette, one of the major filmmakers of the French New Wave. Notorious for its unwieldy length of twelve hours and forty minutes, it is also referred to as Out 1: Noli me tangere...

    (1971)
  • Last Tango in Paris
    Last Tango in Paris
    Last Tango in Paris is a 1972 Italian romantic drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci which portrays a recent American widower who takes up an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, soon-to-be-married Parisian woman...

    (1972)
  • The Mother and the Whore
    The Mother and the Whore
    The Mother and the Whore is a 1973 French film directed by Jean Eustache. Examing the relationship between three characters in a love triangle, it was Eustache's first feature film and is considered his masterpiece.-Plot:...

    (1973)
  • La Nuit américaine (1973)
  • Love on the Run
    Love on the Run (1979 film)
    Love on the Run is a 1979 French film directed by François Truffaut. It is Truffaut's fifth and final film about the character Antoine Doinel. A lot of the film is made of a "clip show" of the previous films in the series...

    (1979)
  • Détective
    Détective
    Détective is a 1985 French crime film directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It was entered into the 1985 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Laurent Terzieff - William Prospero* Aurelle Doazan - Arielle* Jean-Pierre Léaud - Inspector Neveu...

    (1985)
  • Treasure Island
    Treasure Island (1985 film)
    Treasure Island is a 1985 Chilean-French adventure film directed by Raúl Ruiz. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Melvil Poupaud - Jim Hawkins* Martin Landau - Old Captain...

    (1985)
  • Les Keufs (1987)
  • 36 Fillette
    36 Fillette
    36 Fillette is a 1988 French film starring Delphine Zentout and Oliver Parniere, directed by Catherine Breillat. It is the story of a sexually-curious and rebellious 14-year-old who has an emotionally-charged and dually-manipulative relationship with an older man.-Plot:Lili, a pouty and voluptuous...

    (1988)
  • I Hired a Contract Killer
    I Hired a Contract Killer
    I Hired a Contract Killer is a film directed, produced and written by the Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki in 1990. It is a Finnish-British-German-Swedish co-production and stars the renowned French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud...

    (1990)
  • La Vie de Bohème
    La Vie de Bohème (film)
    La Vie de Bohème is a 1992 film directed by Aki Kaurismäki and starring Matti Pellonpää, Evelyne Didi and André Wilms. Kaurismäki's screenplay for the film was based on Henri Murger's influential novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème which has spawned several on-screen adaptations as well as plays and...

    (1992)
  • La naissance de l'amour (1993)
  • Mon Homme
    Mon Homme (film)
    My Man is a 1996 French film directed by Bertrand Blier.-Cast and roles:* Anouk Grinberg - Marie Abarth* Gérard Lanvin - Jeannot* Valeria Bruni Tedeschi - Sanguine* Olivier Martinez - Jean-François* Dominique Valadié - Gilberte...

    (My Man) (1996)
  • Irma Vep
    Irma Vep
    Irma Vep is a 1996 film directed by the French director Olivier Assayas, starring Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung in a story about the disasters that ensue as a middle-aged French film director attempts to remake Louis Feuillade's classic silent film serial Les vampires...

    (1996)
  • Two Short Films by François Truffaut (1999)
  • Innocent (1999)
  • Diary of a Seducer (2001)
  • The Pornographer (2001)
  • What Time Is It There?
    What Time Is It There?
    What Time Is It There? is a 2001 film directed by Tsai Ming-liang. It stars Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shiang-chyi, and Lu Yi-Ching.-Plot:The film tells two parallel stories, one about the life of a street vendor following the death of his father; the other about a woman he meets briefly as she heads...

    (2001)
  • The Dreamers (2004)
  • Face
    Face (2009 film)
    Face is a 2009 French film directed by Tsai Ming-liang. It was nominated for the Golden Palm at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.-Cast:* Fanny Ardant as La productrice et la reine Hérodias* Laetitia Casta as La star et Salomé...

    (2009)
  • Le Havre
    Le Havre (film)
    Le Havre is a 2011 comedy-drama film written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki, starring André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Blondin Miguel. It tells the story of a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child in the French port city Le Havre. The film was produced by Kaurismäki's...

    (2011)

External links

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