Luc Besson

Born

Luc Paul Maurice Besson , Paris, France

Birthday

1959-03-18

Occupation

Director, Screenplay

Spouse(s)

Anne Parillaud (m. 1986–1991) Maïwenn Le Besco (m. 1992–1997) Milla Jovovich (m. 1997–1999) Virginie Silla (m. 2004)

Years Active

1981–present

Luc Besson is a French film director, screenwriter, and producer. He directed or produced the films Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), and Nikita (1990). Besson is associated with the Cinéma du look film movement. He has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Léon: The Professional and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element (1997). He wrote and directed the 2014 sci-fi thriller film Lucy and the 2017 space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

In 1980, he founded his own production company, Les Films du Loup, and, later, Les Films du Dauphin, which were superseded in 2000 by his co-founding EuropaCorp film company with his longtime collaborator, Pierre-Ange Le Pogam [fr]. As writer, director, or producer, Besson has so far been involved in the creation of more than 50 films.

He reportedly worked on the first drafts of Le Grand Bleu while still in his teens. Out of boredom, Besson started writing stories, including the background to what he later developed as The Fifth Element (1997), one of his most popular movies. The film is inspired by the French comic books which Besson read as a teenager. Besson directed and co-wrote the screenplay of this science fiction thriller with the screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen.

At 18, Besson returned to his birthplace of Paris. There he took odd jobs in film to get a feel for the industry. He worked as an assistant to directors including Claude Faraldo and Patrick Grandperret. Besson directed three short films, a commissioned documentary, and several commercials. After this, he moved to the United States for three years, but returned to Paris, where he formed his own production company. He first named it Les Films du Loup, but changed it to Les Films du Dauphin. In the early 1980s, Besson met Éric Serra and asked him to compose the score for his first short film, L'Avant dernier. He later used Serra as a composer for other films of his. Since the late 20th century, Besson has written and produced numerous action movies, including the Taxi (1998–2007) and The Transporter (2002–2008) series, and the Jet Li films Kiss of the Dragon and Unleashed/Danny the Dog. His English-language films Taken, Taken 2 and Taken 3, all starring Liam Neeson, have been major successes, with Taken 2 becoming the largest-grossing export French film. Besson produced the promotional movie for the Paris bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Besson won the Lumières Award for Best Director and the César Award for Best Director, for his film The Fifth Element (1997). He was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture César Awards for his films Léon: The Professional (1994) and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). French actor Jean Reno has appeared in several films by Besson, including Le dernier combat (1985), Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), Nikita (1990), and Léon: The Professional (1994).

Critics cite Besson as a pivotal figure in the Cinéma du look movement, a specific, highly visual style produced from the 1980s into the early 1990s. Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988) and Nikita (1990) are all considered to be of this stylistic school. The term was coined by critic Raphaël Bassan in a 1989 essay in La Revue du Cinema n° 449. A partisan of the experimental cinema and friend of the New Wave ("nouvelle vague") directors, Bassan grouped Besson with Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as three directors who shared the style of "le look." These directors were later described critically as favouring style over substance, and spectacle over narrative.

Besson, along with most of the filmmakers so categorised, was uncomfortable with the label, particularly in light of the achievements of their forebears: France's New Wave. "Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were rebelling against existing cultural values and used cinema as a means of expression simply because it was the most avant-garde medium at the time," said Besson in a 1985 interview in The New York Times. "Today, the revolution is occurring entirely within the industry and is led by people who want to change the look of movies by making them better, more convincing and pleasurable to watch.

"Because it's becoming increasingly difficult to break into this field, we have developed a psychological armor and are ready to do anything in order to work", he added in this same interview. "I think our ardor alone is going to shake the pillars of the moviemaking establishment."

Besson directed a biopic of Aung San Suu Kyi called The Lady (original title Dans la Lumiere), which was released in the fall of 2011. He also worked on Lockout, which was released in April 2012.

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