Jean-Marc Barr Biography

Jean-Marc Barr (born 27 September 1960) is an American film actor and director of French descent.

Biography

Youth

Barr's mother is French. His American father was in the US Air Force and served in the Second World War. Jean-Marc Barr is primarily known as an actor, but is also a film director, screenwriter and producer. Barr is bilingual in French and English. He studied philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Paris Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. He moved to London to pursue an education in drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Career

Barr began working in theatre in France in 1986. After some television roles (including a small role in Hotel du Lac (1986), the BBC's version of the Booker prize-winning novel by Anita Brookner), and film work, in particular, Hope and Glory (1987) by John Boorman, he was cast in the tremendously successful The Big Blue (1988). Luc Besson cast him in the role of French diver Jacques Mayol. He played in the role opposite Rosanna Arquette and Jean Reno. The Big Blue was the most financially successful film in France in the 1980s.

In 1991, he starred in Danish director Lars von Trier's Europa, marking the beginning of a long friendship (he is the godfather of von Trier's children) as well as a significant professional relationship. He went on to appear in von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2004), Manderlay (2005) and The Boss of It All (2006). Also in 2005 he starred in the French film Crustacés et Coquillages.

His collaboration with von Trier put him on track to start directing his own work. He debuted in 1999 as a director, screenwriter and producer with the intimate love story Lovers. This film became the first part of a trilogy; the two subsequent parts being the drama Too Much Flesh (2000) and the comedy Being Light (2001) which he co-directed with Pascal Arnold. Barr and Pascal also directed the 2012 film Sexual Chronicles of a French Family.

He may also be recognized for his role as the attractive divorce lawyer, Maitre Bertram in the Merchant Ivory film le Divorce (2003). He appeared as Hugo in The Red Siren in 2002. He appeared as the main character in the video for Blur's 1995 single, "Charmless Man".

He played author Jack Kerouac in the 2013 film adaptation of the Beat Generation autobiographical novel Big Sur.