Jean Reno was born on July 30, 1948 in Casablanca, Morocco to Spanish parents who were living in Morocco to escape the Spanish fascist regime of Francisco Franco. When he was young Jean Reno’s mother passed away and soon the young man found himself in Paris, France studying acting. He began appearing in French stage production and was beginning to amass credits for French television when he finally began getting movie roles at the age of 30. The first film he appeared in was the French language file The Hypothesis Of The Stolen Painting made in 1979. Though not a large role Jean Reno received praise for his part in the short film and soon he began to get very busy with television and film work and his resume began to grow. Jean Reno is a huge man at 6’2” tall so in his very early days he was always cast as a brute or some sort of bad guy that was bent on beating people up and intimidating them. However his considerable acting skills soon allowed him to break out of that stereotype and by the time he was making waves on the international scene he was becoming more well known for his acting prowess instead of his hulking size.

By 1993 Jean Reno had a long list of acting credits to his name and by the time he appeared in the internationally released 1993 comedy The Visitors he was already a household name in France. The Visitors was one of his first starring roles in an internationally released film and although it did not make a huge impact on the American box office it did make a huge impact on the rest of the world and it became impossible to ignore the talents of Jean Reno any longer. In 1995 Jean Reno finally burst upon the American scene with his role as Inspector Jean-Paul Cardon in the hit movie French Kiss. The movie was a huge success in the United States and Jean Reno played a role that he would be asked to reprise over and over again for American movie audiences. It was this role that thrust Jean Reno into being the guy you call if you need a French inspector of any kind in your international movie and it was this reputation as Hollywood’s French inspector that would lead to some of Jean Reno’s best know roles.

In 1996 he appeared with Tom Cruise in the mega hit Mission: Impossible and established himself as an international super star. In 1998 he appeared in the financially successful, but critically hated, American Godzilla movie in which he played a French special agent trying to cover for the mistakes France made in helping to create Godzilla. Some have said that including France as a nuclear power is a pretty long stretch for any movie and that the stretch was made specifically to get Jean Reno into the movie. This was never confirmed nor denied but Godzilla did help to make Jean Reno the “go to” French actor for international movies.

When The Da Vinci Code came out in 2006 there was only one person ever considered to play the French police captain Bezu Fache. Jean Reno played his role perfectly in The Da Vinci Code and now his slate of upcoming movies is very full. The world will be getting the chance to see a lot of Jean Reno in the years to come.