Actor: Vincent Cassel

Vincent Cassel broke through in La Haine, a black-and-white film about a day in the Parisian banlieues that remains one of the most significant French films of the 1990s.

Irréversible, Mesrine and Black Swan followed, and Ocean’s Twelve and Eastern Promises gave him English-language work. He is the son of the actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, trained in circus arts, and works in French, English, Italian and Portuguese.