Jean-Pierre Léaud

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.

As he had so much respect for Marlon Brando and was afraid of working with him, all his scenes in Last Tango in Paris (1972) were shot on Saturdays, when Brando refused to work. Thus, they didn't meet together during the entire shooting.

In 1968, during the military dictatorship government in Brazil, as seen in the documentary Barra 68 - Sem Perder a Ternura (2001), Jean-Pierre Léaud, who was also a political militant, made a speech for hundreds of students at Brasília University, which is in Brazil's capital.

"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 played the same part - Antoine Doinel- in five films: as young boy in The 400 Blows (1959), as an adolescent in the "Antoine et Colette" segment of the anthology Love at Twenty (1962) and, together with the actress Claude Jade as his girlfriend, and later wife, Christine in Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed & Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979).

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".