French New Wave icon Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless,” has died at his home in Paris on Monday. He was 88. No cause was given.
Belmondo was famed for playing tough, amoral, unsentimental characters on the fringes of society before steering towards more crowd-pleasing roles.
Still, Belmondo was often seen as one of the New Wave’s most important figures with roles in films like Vittorio De Sica’s “Two Women,” Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Leon Morin, Priest,” Jean-Pierre Melville’s “The Fingerman” and “Magnet of Doom,” Henry Verneuil’s ” Greed in the Sun,” and Philippe de Broca’s hit “The Man from Rio”. He also re-teamed with Godard for “Pierrot le Fou,” and joined Francois Truffaut for “Mississippi Mermaid”.
Belmondo turned down all attempts to be wooed by Hollywood, sticking very much to French films and avoiding English language films. His final film was 2009’s “A Man and His Dog”.
Source: The New York Times