Life and career
Lavant was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, in France. At 13, he took courses in pantomime and the circus, fascinated by Marcel Marceau. He trained at the Paris Conservatoire under Jacques Lassalle, [1] and began his professional career in 1982 in theatre, acting in Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice . In 1982 he appeared in the television film L'Ombre sur la plage, before playing the minor part of Montparnasse in Robert Hossein's Les Misérables , [1] which was entered into the 13th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Special Prize. [2] He appeared in several further minor roles before making his breakthrough in 1984 as the lead in Boy Meets Girl , playing a depressed, aspiring filmmaker who falls in love with a suicidal young woman. The film marked the feature-film debut of Leos Carax, with whose work Lavant has been associated ever since. [3] [4]
In 1986, Lavant and Carax worked together again on the thriller Mauvais Sang and again in 1991 on Carax's third film, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf . In both Mauvais Sang and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Lavant starred opposite Juliette Binoche. [3] In 1998, Lavant appeared in the Jonathan Glazer-directed video for the UNKLE song "Rabbit in Your Headlights", and in 1999, he played one of the lead roles in Beau Travail , directed by Claire Denis. In 2007, he appeared in Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely , in which he portrayed a Charlie Chaplin impersonator. Lavant, who does not speak English, took an intensive language course in preparation and learned his lines phonetically. [5] His longtime associate Leos Carax appears in a supporting role as the main character's talent agent.
In 2008, Lavant and Carax re-united for the anthology film Tokyo! , which marked their first work together since Lovers on the Bridge and Carax's first major directing work in nearly a decade. Carax's segment for the film, called "Merde," starred Lavant as a violent monster who lives in the sewers of Tokyo and speaks in a gibberish language, venturing out occasionally to attack passersby.
In 2012, he starred in Leos Carax' film Holy Motors where he plays a "chameleonic actor on assignment, ferried around Paris in a white limousine and changing en route from beggar-woman to satyr to assassin to victim." [6] The film was an entrant at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2016, he starred in a 30-second clip directed by Yorgos Lanthimos to accompany the song "Identikit" by Radiohead.
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
