Jean-Paul Belmondo, star of Breathless, dies aged 88
Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 classic made Belmondo a major star and his craggy looks led to a stellar career in France and around the world
Jean-Paul Belmondo, the French actor who shot to international fame in Jean-Luc Godard's revolutionary New Wave classic Breathless, has died aged 88. The actor's lawyer confirmed the news to AFP.
Belmondo - nicknamed Bebel by French audiences - became one of the country's biggest box-office stars in the 60s and 70s, his battered-looking face a contrast to the chiselled features of his rival and sometime-collaborator Alain Delon. Like Delon, Belmondo was a key figure of the outstanding generation of European film-making of the period, with the series of films he made with Godard - which included A Woman Is a Woman and Pierrot le Fou - making an indelible mark.
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