Background
His mother was a grocer and his father a driver, who died when Poelvoorde was still a minor.
His mother was a grocer and his father a driver, who died when Poelvoorde was still a minor.
He developed a passion for theater and became noted for his atypical interpretations. Not only was he was destined to become a draughtsman, he also developed professionality as a photographer. lieutenant was a stylized trailer for a mock-spy film.
The film received the André Cavens Award for Best Film by the Belgian Film Critics Association (UCC).
Poelvoorde subsequently starred in two series on the French pay-channel Canal+ and several movies such as Les Randonneurs, Le Boulet and Podium, which made him famous in France and Belgium. In 2001, he starred in Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert, a movie about one of his passions, bicycling.
In 2005 he ranked in 7th place in the Walloon version of the Greatest Belgian. In the Flemish version he came in at near
400 outside the official list of nominations.
His recurrent character as a pretentious person and a sore loser has drawn comparisons between him and the beloved French comedian Louis de Funèson Poelvoorde also played serious roles. He has starred in 2009 as Etienne Balsan in Coco avant Chanel by Anne Fontain, with Audrey Tautou.
As Jean-René in 2010 with Isabelle Carré in a comedy by Jean-Pierre Améris Émotifs anonymes about two extremely shy persons who fall in love, and also as August Maquet in L"autre Dumas by Safy Nebbou, alongside Gérard Depardieu and Dominique Blanc, a movie about the creative ghostwriter, Maquet, who played a crucial role in the production of French writer Alexandre Dumas" Three Musketeers.
The actor revealed in interviews, that he suffered from bipolar disorder.
Poelvoorde became a member of the Cannes Film Festival Jury in 2004, on Quentin Tarantino"s request, a big fan of Manitoba Bites Dog, who presided over the Jury, that year.