Luc Besson

Info

Full Name: Luc Besson
Date of birth: March 18, 1959 (67 years old)
Location: París
Country: France

Luc Besson has been active for 31 years, participating in 44 movies that average a 5.9/10 score.

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Biography

Luc Besson was born in Paris on 18 March 1959, the son of two Club Med scuba diving instructors, and spent his childhood in the waters off Greece and Yugoslavia. The plan was marine biology and a life studying dolphins, until a diving accident at 17 ended it overnight. Cinema became the substitute obsession. After a spell as a runner and assistant on sets in Paris and Hollywood, he directed his first feature at 24: 'Le Dernier Combat' (1983), a postapocalyptic fable in black and white, without a single line of dialogue, that introduced him to Jean Reno.

'Subway' (1985), with Christopher Lambert and Isabelle Adjani chasing each other through the Paris metro, made him the face of the French 'cinéma du look', all neon, synths and style. 'The Big Blue' (1988), his ode to free diving, became a generational phenomenon at home, and 'Nikita' (1990), the thriller about a junkie turned government assassin, won a César for his then wife Anne Parillaud and spawned an American remake plus a TV series.

'Léon', 'The Fifth Element' and worldwide fame

'Léon' (1994) remains his best loved film: Jean Reno as a hitman who waters a houseplant between jobs, Gary Oldman as one of the great screen villains and a debuting Natalie Portman, then twelve years old. Three years later came 'The Fifth Element' (1997) with Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich, the space opera that opened Cannes, was the most expensive European production of its day and earned him the César for Best Director. He closed the decade with 'Joan of Arc' (1999), starring Jovovich, whom he'd married in 1997.

The house that 'Taken' built

In 2000 he founded EuropaCorp with producer Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, a bid to build a French studio able to compete with Hollywood. He had already written the smash hit 'Taxi' (1998), and from his new base he churned out franchises: 'The Transporter', which turned Jason Statham into an action star, 'District 13' and above all 'Taken' (2008), the film that reinvented Liam Neeson as an action hero in his mid fifties. In 2012 he also opened the Cité du Cinéma, a vast studio complex on the edge of Paris.

His own films kept switching lanes: the animated 'Arthur and the Invisibles' trilogy, the comic book adventure 'The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec' (2010), the Aung San Suu Kyi biopic 'The Lady' (2011) and the mob comedy 'The Family' (2013) with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer. Then 'Lucy' (2014) happened: the Scarlett Johansson action thriller took over 450 million dollars worldwide and became the highest grossing French film up to that point.

Collapse, courts and comeback

'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets' (2017), with Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne, was the most expensive European film ever made at around 180 million dollars, and it bombed. Together with the failure of 'Anna' (2019), it dragged EuropaCorp into restructuring: the American fund Vine took control in 2020, keeping Besson on as artistic director of the studio he had built. Those years also brought a rape allegation from actress Sand Van Roy in 2018; French courts dismissed the case at every stage and the Court of Cassation closed it definitively in 2023.

The comeback started at the Venice Film Festival with 'Dogman' (2023), built around a remarkable Caleb Landry Jones, and continued with 'June & John' (2025), a tiny experiment shot entirely on an iPhone. Then came 'Dracula: A Love Tale' (2025), his gothic romance with Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz and Zoë Bleu, which ended up as the highest grossing French film of its year worldwide. Next on the slate: 'The Last Man', a science fiction tale starring Snoop Dogg, and 'Father Joe', the Al Pacino drama he wrote and produced.

Off screen, he has been married four times: to Anne Parillaud, mother of his daughter Juliette, to actress and director Maïwenn, mother of Shanna, to Milla Jovovich and, since 2004, to producer Virginie Silla, with whom he has three children and who produces all his recent work. Not a bad second act for a teenager whose only dream was to swim with dolphins.