Jean-Pierre Léaud

About Jean-Pierre Léaud

Who is it?: Actor, Assistant Director, Director
Birth Day: May 28, 1944
Birth Place:  Paris, France, France
Occupation: Actor
Years active: 1958–present
Awards: Silver Bear for Best Actor (Berlin International Film Festival) 1966 Masculin Féminin Best Actor (Thessaloniki Film Festival) 1996 Pour rire! Honorary César (César Awards) 2000 FIPRESCI Prize 2001 The Pornographer

Jean-Pierre Léaud

Jean-Pierre Léaud was born on May 28, 1944 in  Paris, France, France, is Actor, Assistant Director, Director. Jean-Pierre Léaud is not everybody's cup of tea for sure, but will remain an important name in film history. As an actor he can be adored or hated for exactly the same reasons: he is one of those rare players that directors let improvise his dialogue, which gets on certain viewers' nerves while it fascinates others. The same is true for his very personal staccato diction and elocution and his many mannerisms, the most obvious one being his way to run his hand through his long hair. But there is no denying Léaud is not just another actor, whether you love him or are allergic to him. The son of actress Jacqueline Pierreux and scriptwriter/assistant director Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre started acting very early. Indeed, he was only thirteen when he first appeared on a screen, playing a small role in a swashbuckling film directed by veteran Georges Lampin "la Tour, prends garde!" (1957). And he was still only fourteen when he answered an ad placed in a newspaper by François Truffaut, who was seeking a young actor able to play Antoine Doinel, a troubled adolescent, in his first feature film "The 400 blows". Jean-Pierre was tested among a hundred other candidates and proved so amazingly spontaneous and so gifted for improvisation that not only was he hired but he would go on to play the role in four subsequent Truffaut semi-autobiographies concluding with "Love on the run" (1978), a unique experience indeed. Thanks to Truffaut he was introduced to the other stars of the French New Wave, mainly Jean-Luc Godard for whom he would appear in eight films and one TV film, and gradually became their icon. Not too sure about his acting talents, he planned to become a director (which he actually did only once) and worked as an assistant to Truffaut and Godard. But his success both as Truffaut's alter ego and as the leftist movie makers' spokesman encouraged him to go on playing rather than directing. "Masculin Féminin" (1966) by Godard even earned him an Award for Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival. An ardent leftist militant himself, he worked with equally committed directors, including abroad. He was in Italian Pasolini's "Porcile" (1968), in Polish Skolimovski's "Dialog 20-40-60" (also '68) Brazilian Carlos Diegues' Os herdeiros (1970) and Glauber Rocha's Der Leone have sept cabeças (1971). Bertolucci also hired him for "Last tango in Paris" starring Marlon Brando (who so petrified Léaud that he could not play his scenes alongside him), but this one was filmed in Paris. This busy period ended after an excellent role in a classic art movie in the French style: Jean Eustache's "La maman et la putain". In the late seventies and throughout the eighties Léaud worked irregularly, mainly on television, occasionally giving a crazy performance in a mainstream film, as was the case in Josiane's Balasko crime comedy "Les keufs", for which he got a César nomination. But he made an exciting comeback in the nineties when several "new New Wave" directors hired Léaud to pay homage to their elders. Among them French movie makers such as Olivier Assayas, Danièle Dubroux , Serge Le Péron or Bertrand Bonello and foreigners like Finnish Aki Käurismäki and Taiwanese Tsai Ming-Liang. A second youth for eternally young, rebellious, ill-at-ease, annoyingly romantic,touchingly annoying Jean-Pierre Léaud, whose round face staring at the camera in the last shot of "The 400 blows" will never be forgotten.
Jean-Pierre Léaud is a member of Actor

Does Jean-Pierre Léaud Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Jean-Pierre Léaud is still alive (as per Wikipedia, Last update: May 10, 2020).

🎂 Jean-Pierre Léaud - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

Currently, Jean-Pierre Léaud is 80 years, 6 months and 24 days old. Jean-Pierre Léaud will celebrate 81rd birthday on a Wednesday 28th of May 2025. Below we countdown to Jean-Pierre Léaud upcoming birthday.

Days
Hours
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Seconds
Popular As Jean-Pierre Léaud
Occupation Actor
Age 80 years old
Zodiac Sign Gemini
Born May 28, 1944 ( Paris, France, France)
Birthday May 28
Town/City  Paris, France, France
Nationality France

🌙 Zodiac

Jean-Pierre Léaud’s zodiac sign is Gemini. According to astrologers, Gemini is expressive and quick-witted, it represents two different personalities in one and you will never be sure which one you will face. They are sociable, communicative and ready for fun, with a tendency to suddenly get serious, thoughtful and restless. They are fascinated with the world itself, extremely curious, with a constant feeling that there is not enough time to experience everything they want to see.

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Jean-Pierre Léaud was born in the Year of the Monkey. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Monkey thrive on having fun. They’re energetic, upbeat, and good at listening but lack self-control. They like being active and stimulated and enjoy pleasing self before pleasing others. They’re heart-breakers, not good at long-term relationships, morals are weak. Compatible with Rat or Dragon.

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Biography/Timeline

1958

Truffaut was immediately captivated by the fourteen-year-old adolescent, who had already appeared with Jean Marais in Georges Lampin's La Tour, prends garde ! (1958). 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". In his final interview, Truffaut mentioned he was happy with how Léaud improvised within the flexibly written script.

1959

Throughout the production of The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959), wrote Jay Carr "Truffaut would take Léaud to see rushes of Godard's Breathless each evening. They'd sit up late talking film with Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Eustache, Orson Welles.” Upon the filmmaker’s death, the actor reminisced Truffaut was the first person he admired and that he “spoke to children like they were adults. He realized that children understood things better than adults did. He was purely intuitive. We operated in a sort of complicity.”

1966

In March 1966, Léaud won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin, féminin. He was nominated for a César Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for Les Keufs and was awarded an Honorary César for lifetime achievement in 2000.

1970

Léaud is one of the most visible and well-known actors to be associated with the French New Wave film movement and, aside from his work with Truffaut, collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard (nine films), Jean Eustache, Jacques Rivette and Agnes Varda. The early 1970s was perhaps the peak of his professional career when he had three critically acclaimed films released: Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), Truffaut's La Nuit américaine, and Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (both 1973). In the Bertolucci film, Léaud appeared in the same film as a hero of his, Marlon Brando , although the two men never met, since all of Léaud's scenes were shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays.

2014

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 as his girlfriend, and then wife, Christine. Those films are Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut stated that Léaud was the source of inspiration for the Antoine Doinel character and "I created some scenes just because I knew he would be funny in them—at least I laughed during the writing as I thought of him." He also collaborated with Truffaut on non-Antoine Doinel films like Two English Girls (Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent]], 1971) and Day for Night (La Nuit américaine, 1973) and became the actor most commonly affiliated with him. Although Antoine Doinel is his most familiar character, he often found his performances in other films to be compared to his Doinel character whether there were legitimate similarities or not.

2019

During and following the filming of The 400 Blows, Truffaut’s concern for Léaud extended beyond the film set. He took charge of the difficult adolescent’s upbringing after Léaud was expelled from school and kicked out of the home of the retired couple taking care of him. Truffaut subsequently rented a studio apartment for Léaud. Truffaut also hired him for assistant work on The Soft Skin (La peau douce, 1964) and Mata Hari, Agent H21 (1964).

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