Michel Blanc
Born: June 16 1952
Where: Ile De France, France
The actor-writer-director's international reputation grew steadily in the 1990s, particularly after the release of the comedy Grosse Fatigue.
The twist in the film was that "auteur" Michel Blanc used real actors and personalities, such as Charlotte Gainsbourg and Roman Polanski, portraying themselves, yet in scripted roles.
The film won Blanc the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Bald and diminutive, he has nevertheless become one of France's leading screen stars, and occasionally appears in English-language films as well.
Starting out with an acting troupe called Le Splendide he big screen debut was in The Best Way To Walk in 1975.
Work followed steadily with roles in Polanski's The Tenant and L'Adolescente, directed by Jeanne Moreau.
By the 80s, his first two scripts were directed by Patrice Leconte: Come to My Place, I'm Living at My Girl-Friend's and Singles in 1982.
He made his directorial debut with Walk in the Shadow and flexed his acting muscle after a series of lights roles in Menage opposite Gerard Depardieu.
His performance won the Best Actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival.
Three years later, Blanc was again in the spotlight with the release of Monsieur Hire, a thriller in which he played a lonely tailor obsessively watching a woman through his window.
Blanc had some exposure to American audiences as the hotel manager in Strike It Rich, a Molly Ringwald comedy.
In 1991, he was Alonso, under the tutelage of John Gielgud in Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books and subsequently appeared as an assistant prefect to police in Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter.
Despite appearances in English language films, Blanc had not left France for the lure of international films, as Grosse Fatigue attested.
He also appeared in Roberto Benigni's The Monster as a criminal psychiatrist on the trail of a serial killer.
Recently, he directed and starred in the delightful French farce Summer Things with Charlotte Rampling and Carole Bouquet.
