Benoît Magimel

Benoît Mag­imel land­ed his first film role at age 12 in Éti­enne Chatiliez’s cult com­e­dy Life Is a Long Qui­et Riv­er. He then decid­ed to quit school and devote him­self to cin­e­ma by appear­ing in sev­er­al films. Most notably, he shot Math­ieu Kassovitz’s Hate (1995), André Téchiné’s Thieves (1996), for which he earned his first César nom­i­na­tion for Best New Actor, and Xavier Beau­vois’ To Matthew (2000). In 2001, he co-starred with Isabelle Hup­pert in Michael Haneke’s dra­ma The Piano Teacher, for which he won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. The actor explores many gen­res, alter­nat­ing between art­house and com­mer­cial films, and has forged last­ing ties with sev­er­al film­mak­ers who work reg­u­lar­ly with him, includ­ing Claude Chabrol, Flo­rent-Emilio Siri, Nicole Gar­cia and Emmanuelle Bercot. In 2016, he starred with Bercot in Stand­ing Tall, for which he won the Best Sup­port­ing Actor César, fol­lowed by 150 Mil­ligrams sev­er­al months lat­er, and Peace­ful in 2021. His deeply affect­ing per­for­mance earned him the 2022 Best Actor César, an award he also won the fol­low­ing year for Albert Serra’s Paci­fic­tion, becom­ing the first French actor to win two years run­ning. A pro­lif­ic per­former, he appeared in three films last year: Elias Belkeddar’s The King of Algiers, Stéphanie Di Gusto’s Ros­alie and Tran Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things, win­ner of the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val Award for Best Direc­tor in 2023 and select­ed to rep­re­sent France at last year’s Acad­e­my Awards in the Best Inter­na­tion­al Film cat­e­go­ry. Benoît Mag­imel will soon star in Simon Moutaïrou’s debut fea­ture, No Chains, No Mas­ters.