Jean-Christophe Bouvet (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ kʁistɔf buvɛ]; born 24 March 1947) is a French actor, director and screenwriter. Best known in his homeland for his role as General Edmond Bertineau in Luc Besson's Taxi film series, he gained international fame for his appearance as designer Pierre Cadault in Darren Star's Emily in Paris television series.
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Biography
Jean-Christophe Bouvet took drama classes under Jean-Laurent Cochet at the Théâtre Édouard VII. He also studied film, linguistics, and psychoanalysis at Paris VIII University. During this time, he met André Téchiné and Claude Chabrol, subsequently becoming their assistant director. He worked simultaneously as an actor, assistant director, and writer.
He landed his first major role in Paul Vecchiali's La Machine (1977), portraying a man sentenced to death for the murder of a child. He had previously collaborated with the director on the controversial film Change pas de main, released on 18 June 1975. The film received an 18+ rating due to numerous unsimulated sex scenes, including a sequence featuring a close-up of Bouvet during a group sex scene.
In 1989, he served as the model for L'Origine de la guerre ("The Origin of War"), an artwork by Orlan.
Bouvet is particularly known for portraying disturbing or shady characters, such as Pierre Lentier, the murderer in La Machine; Satan, depicted as a perverse and complex horse dealer in the Bernanos-Pialat adaptation Under the Sun of Satan; and Jean-Paul Martoni, the corrupt politician in La Cité de la peur. He has appeared in a wide variety of films, ranging from the radical auteur cinema of Jean-Claude Biette to mainstream productions by Luc Besson. In 2016, he played Gauthier, a caustic and herd-minded salesman, in Pierre Léon's Deux Rémi, deux. In 2017, he played a shifty, homosexual innkeeper in Jours de France, the debut feature film by Jérôme Reybaud. In 2018, he played Tonton, an old sage fond of yoga, in Jean-Claude Brisseau's Que le diable nous emporte.
Described by film director and critic Louis Skorecki as the "greatest actor in the world", Jean-Christophe Bouvet is also considered by Serge Kaganski to be the "Jean-Pierre Léaud of the post-New Wave generation".