Early life

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 adolescents, 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.

Truffaut was immediately captivated by the fourteen-year-old adolescent, who had already appeared the previous year with Jean Marais in Georges Lampin's La Tour prends garde! 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.". 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 far from an 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." 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,. he was already very good at writing, and he even claimed to Truffaut that he had written a "verse tragedy", Torquatus.

Truffaut's influence from adolescence into adulthood

Throughout the production of The 400 Blows,”Truffaut would take Leaud to see rushes of Godard's Breathless each evening. They'd sit up late talking film with Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, Eustache, Orson Welles.” Upon the filmmaker’s death, the actor reminisced Truffaut was the first person he admired and that he “spoke to children like they were adults. He realized that children understood things better than adults did. He was purely intuitive. We operated in a sort of complicity.”

During and following the filming of The 400 Blows, Truffaut’s concern for Léaud extended beyond the film set. He took charge of the difficult adolescent’s upbringing after Léaud was expelled from school and kicked out of the home of the retired couple taking care of him. Truffaut subsequently rented a studio apartment for Léaud. Truffaut also hired him for assistant work on The Soft Skin and Mata Hari, Agent H21.

Acting career

Léaud starred in four more Truffaut films depicting the life of Doinel, spanning a period of 20 years—after the short-film Antoine et Colette in 1962—beside actress Claude Jade as his girlfriend, and then wife, Christine. Those films are Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970) and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut stated that Léaud was the source of inspiration for the Antoine Doinel character and "I created some scenes just because I knew he would be funny in them—at least I laughed during the writing as I thought of him." He also collaborated with Truffaut on non-Antoine Doinel films like Two English Girls and La Nuit américaine and became the actor most commonly affiliated with him. Although Antoine Doinel is his most famous character, he often found his performances in other films to be compared to his Doinel character whether there were legitimate similarities or not.

He is one of the most visible and well-known actors to be associated with the French New Wave film movement and, aside from his work with Truffaut, collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard (nine films), Jean Eustache, Jacques Rivette and Agnes Varda. 1973 was perhaps the peak of his professional career when he had three critically acclaimed films released: Truffaut's La Nuit américaine, Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris and Eustache's The Mother and the Whore.

In 1966, he won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin, féminin. He was nominated for a César Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1988 for Les Keufs and was awarded an Honorary César for lifetime achievement in 2000.

Léaud acted in films by other influential directors, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jerzy Skolimowski, Bernardo Bertolucci, Aki Kaurismäki and more recently Olivier Assayas and Tsai Ming-liang. He appeared with a hero of his, Marlon Brando in the Bertolucci film Last Tango in Paris, although the two never met, since all of Léaud's scenes were shot on Saturdays and Brando refused to work on Saturdays.

Personal life

He is married to the French actress, Brigitte Duvivier.

Honours and awards

• (1961) Nominated for the BAFTA Film Award for being the "Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles" for his role in The 400 Blows (1959).
• (1966) Won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival for his role in Masculin Féminin.
• (1987) Nominated for César Award for Best Supporting Actor at the César Awards for his role in the film Les keufs.
• (1996) Won "Best Actor" at the Thessaloniki Film Festival for his role in Pour rire!
• (2000) Received the Honorary César at the César Awards.
• (2001) Shared the FIPRESCI Prize with Bertrand Bonello for his role in The Pornographer.
• (2016) Received the Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role
1958	King on Horseback	Pierrot
1959	The 400 Blows	Antoine Doinel
1960	Boulevard	Jojo
	Testament of Orpheus	Dargelos
1962	Antoine and Colette	Antoine Doinel
1965	Pierrot le Fou	A Spectator
	Love at Sea	Cameo Appearance
1966	Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus	Daniel
	Made in U.S.A.	Donald Siegel
	Masculin Féminin	Paul
	Alphaville	The Waiter
1967	Weekend	Saint-Just
	La Chinoise	Guillaume
	The Departure	Marc
1968	Stolen Kisses	Antoine Doinel
1969	Pigsty	Julian Klotz
	Joy of Learning	Le Rousseau
1970	Bed and Board	Antoine Doinel
	The Seven Headed Lion	Preacher
1971	Two English Girls	Claude Roc
	Out 1	Colin
1972	Last Tango in Paris	Tom
1973	The Mother and the Whore	Alexandre
	Day for Night	Alphonse
1979	Love on the Run	Antoine Doinel
1981	Help Me Dream	Mario
1985	Treasure Island	Midas
	Détective	Inspector Neveu
1987	Les keufs	Commissioner Bullfinch
1988	36 Fillette	Boris Golovine
1989	Bunker Palace Hôtel	Solal
1990	I Hired a Contract Killer	Henri Boulanger
1992	La Vie de Bohème	Blancheron
1993	La Naissance de l'amour	Marcus
1995	One Hundred and One Nights	Jean-Pierre
1996	My Man	Monsieur Claude
	Irma Vep	René Vidal
2001	The Pornographer	Jacques Laurent
	What Time Is It There?	Jean-Pierre/Man at Cemetery
2004	Folle embellie	Fernand
2005	J'ai vu tuer Ben Barka	Georges Franju
2009	Face	Antoine/King Herodes
2011	Le Havre	The Informer
2012	Camille redouble	The Jeweller
2014	La collection: Ecrire pour... la trentaine vue par des écrivains (2014 TV Mini-Series)	Cameo appearance in "Rosa mystica" episode
2016	La Mort de Louis XIV	Louis XIV
2016	M. (in post-production)	Cameo appearance

[ Source: Wikipedia ]