Jean Reno Biography
Born: July 30, 1948
Date of Birth: July 30, 1948
Jean Reno was born in Casablanca, Morocco to Spanish (Andalusian) parents who moved to North Africa to escape the fascism of Francisco Franco. His parents returned to France when Reno was 12 and during his teens, his mother died.
Reno pursued his dream of acting in France after serving his military obligation in Germany. Settling in Paris, he joined stage director Didier Flamand in a traveling theater company that took him around the country.
Reno first registered strongly with his work in Costa Gavras's Claire de Femme in 1979, which he followed with a widely praised performance in Luc Besson's Le Dernier Combat in 1982. This was the first in a series of collaborations with Besson; subsequent films include Subway, The Big Blue and the international hit La Femme Nikita.
Reno's European feature film credits include Pardela les Nuages, Le Jaguar, Loulou Graffiti and L'Operation Corned Beef.
Reno attained success in America after starring as a hitman in the American feature film Léon (1994), introducing a young Natalie Portman. He has since enjoyed considerable success in other American films, co-starring in the spy thriller Mission Impossible, and the comedies French Kiss and The Pink Panther. He played the plum role of Bezu Fache in the highly-touted The Da Vinci Code (2006), starring Tom Hanks. More recently, he starred in Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014).
Reno is divorced from his first wife, with whom he has two children. In 1996, he married second wife Nathalie Dyszkiewicz and they have two children together. They live most of the time in Paris but also have a home in Los Angeles.