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Jean-Pierre LĂ©aud
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Jean-Pierre Leaud and Jacqueline Bisset in a scene from Day for Night, with Leaud in a suit looking at Bisset, who faces forward in a patterned dress and large earrings. scene from Les Quatre Cents Coups Jean-Pierre Leaud and Claude Jade sit at a table, facing each other and holding hands, in a scene from the 1968 film Stolen Kisses directed by Francois Truffaut. Jean-Pierre Leaud rests his chin on his hand while holding a notebook, seated beside Anne Wiazemsky, who wears a cap and holds an open book, in a scene from La Chinoise.
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Born:
May 5, 1944, Paris, France (age 82)
Movement / Style:
New Wave
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Jean-Pierre Leaud and Jacqueline Bisset in a scene from Day for Night, with Leaud in a suit looking at Bisset, who faces forward in a patterned dress and large earrings.
François Truffaut: Day for Night Jean-Pierre Léaud and Jacqueline Bisset in François Truffaut's La Nuit américaine (1973; Day for Night), which won an Oscar for best foreign-language film.

Jean-Pierre LĂ©aud

French actor
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Jean-Pierre LĂ©aud (born May 5, 1944, Paris, France) is a French screen actor who played leading roles in some of the most important French New Wave films of the 1960s and ’70s, particularly ones by François Truffaut.

scene from Les Quatre Cents Coups
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scene from Les Quatre Cents CoupsJean-Pierre Léaud (centre) in Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959; The 400 Blows), directed by François Truffaut.
Jean-Pierre Leaud and Claude Jade sit at a table, facing each other and holding hands, in a scene from the 1968 film Stolen Kisses directed by Francois Truffaut.
2 of 2
Jean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade in Baisers volésJean-Pierre Léaud and Claude Jade in Baisers volés (1968; Stolen Kisses).

The son of a scriptwriter and an actress, LĂ©aud at age 14 was chosen to play the misunderstood adolescent Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s first feature-length film, Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959; The 400 Blows). LĂ©aud appeared in four more Truffaut films which traced Doinel’s progress through physical maturity, courtship, marriage, fatherhood, and finally divorce: L’Amour Ă  vingt ans (1962; Love at Twenty), Baisers volĂ©s (1968; Stolen Kisses), Domicile conjugale (1970; Bed and Board), and L’Amour en fuite (1979; Love on the Run). LĂ©aud was perfectly suited to play the part of Doinel, an engaging and innocent young man who is not particularly well equipped to meet the responsibilities of adult life. LĂ©aud appeared in several other films by Truffaut, including Les Deux Anglaises et le continent (1971; Two English Girls; Anne and Muriel), and La Nuit amĂ©ricaine (1973; Day for Night).

Jean-Pierre Leaud rests his chin on his hand while holding a notebook, seated beside Anne Wiazemsky, who wears a cap and holds an open book, in a scene from La Chinoise.
Jean-Luc Godard: La ChinoiseJean-Pierre LĂ©aud and Anne Wiazemsky in the film La Chinoise (1967), directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

LĂ©aud played roles in several of Jean-Luc Godard’s most important films: Masculin-FĂ©minin (1966; Masculine Feminine), La Chinoise (1967), and Le Week-End (1967; Weekend). He also played parts in films by Jerzy Skolimowski and Bernardo Bertolucci, appearing in the latter’s Last Tango in Paris (1972). An actor of limited range, LĂ©aud nevertheless endowed the role of a scatterbrained young man with both emotional intensity and a wry underlying humour.

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LĂ©aud later appeared in DĂ©tective (1985), Corps et biens (1986; With All Hands), 36 Fillette (1988), and I Hired a Contract Killer (1990). He played an aging movie director in both Irma Vep (1996), a satire of French film production, and The Pornographer (2001). In La Mort de Louis XIV (2016; The Death of Louis XIV), LĂ©aud was cast in the title role, and he portrayed a veteran actor dealing with mortality in Le Lion est mort ce soir (2017; The Lion Sleeps Tonight).

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.