 |
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg Breathless |
Jean-Paul Belmondo,
jaunty star of
New Wave classic ‘Breathless,’
dies at 88
By Adam Bernstein
September 6, 2021 at 11:00 a.m. EDT
Jean-Paul Belmondo, a French actor who vaulted to international renown as a playfully amoral gangster in Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal 1960 New Wave film “Breathless,” and who later enlivened dozens of hit comedy-adventures with his jaunty presence and stunts, died Sept. 6 at 88.
The office of his lawyer, Michel Godest, confirmed his death but did not share additional details.
With his tousled chestnut hair, sinewy physique and battered Roman nose, Mr. Belmondo personified the nonchalant antihero — the lackadaisical tough guy who could use his fists but would rather slug back a few pastis and see where life, or an adventurous woman, might take him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fcRj0SXYh8
Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg
Breathless
In a career spanning six decades and about 90 films, he was most at home playing charming rogues, amorous rebels without a cause, and he became one of Europe’s most popular leading men. No film did more to define his persona than “Breathless,” in which he portrayed a criminal, on the run in Paris, who steals a car, senselessly shoots a police officer and is betrayed by his mercurial American girlfriend (played by Jean Seberg), whom he constantly hectors for sex.