Jean-Pierre Léaud

Jean-Pierre Léaud, ComM (French: [ʒɑ̃pjɛʁ le.o]; born 28 May 1944) is a French actor, best known for playing Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut's series of films about that character, beginning with The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959). He also worked several times with Jean-Luc Godard and Aki Kaurismäki, as well as with other famous directors; Jean Cocteau, Pier Paolo Pasolini,Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Jerzy Skolimowski, Agnes Varda, Jacques Rivette, etc. He is a significant figure of the French New Wave.

He is married to the French actress Brigitte Duvivier.

Born in Paris, Léaud made his major debut as an actor at the age of 14 as Antoine Doinel, a semi-autobiographical character based on the life events of French film director François Truffaut, in The 400 Blows. To cast the two central characters, Antoine Doinel and his partner-in-crime René Bigey, Truffaut published an announcement in France-Soir and auditioned several hundred children in September and October 1958. Jean Domarchi, a critic at Cahiers du cinéma, had earlier recommended the son of an assistant scriptwriter, Pierre Léaud, and the actress Jacqueline Pierreux. Patrick Auffay was cast as René.Truffaut was immediately captivated by the fourteen-year-old Léaud, who had already appeared with Jean Marais in Georges Lampin's La Tour, prends garde ! (1958). He recognized traits they both shared, "for example a certain suffering with regard to the family...With, however, this fundamental difference: though we were both rebels, we hadn't expressed our rebellion in the same way. I preferred to cover up and lie. Jean-Pierre, on the contrary, seeks to hurt, shock and wants it to be known...Why? Because he's unruly, while I was sly. Because his excitability requires that things happen to him, and when they don't occur quickly enough, he provokes them".: 129 In his final interview, Truffaut mentioned he was happy with how Léaud improvised within the flexibly written script.Jean-Pierre Léaud, then in the eighth grade at a private school in Pontigny, was a far from ideal student. The director of the school wrote this to Truffaut, "I regret to inform you that Jean-Pierre is more and more 'unmanageable'. Indifference, arrogance, permanent defiance, lack of discipline in all its forms. He has twice been caught leafing through pornographic pictures in the dorm. He is developing more and more into an emotionally disturbed case".: 129 But this unstable boy, who often ran away with the older students on their nights out, could also be brilliant, generous, and affectionate. Extremely cultured for his age,: 130 he was already very good at writing, and he even claimed to Truffaut that he had written a "verse tragedy", Torquatus.: 130