Jean Reno

Born July 30, 1948, in Casablanca, Morocco, to Spanish parents, Jean Reno moved to France as a teenager and attended film school there before beginning to land roles on stage and TV during the early 1970s. In 1979, he made his film debut in The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting.

During the '80s, Reno became increasingly prominent in French films, most often playing the heavy. Also during this period, he began a professional collaboration with director Luc Besson that would catapult him to stardom in films such as La Femme Nikita (1990) and The Professional (1994).

Now a known quantity on both sides of the Atlantic, in the late '90s, Reno began to land roles in big-budget Hollywood films such as Mission: Impossible, Ronin (opposite Robert De Niro) and Rollerball. More recently, Reno appeared in the 2006 Pink Panther revival (as Steve Martin's partner) and as Capt. Bezu in The Da Vinci Code.

Filmography