Background

Vincent Cassel was born on November 23, 1966, in Paris, France, his real name is Vincent Crochon. Cassel is the son of legendary French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel, who made a career out of playing seductive bourgeois men. His mother is a journalist Sabine Litique, a former editor-in-chief of the gastronomic column of the American Elle. Cassel's parents divorced in 1980.

His brother, Rockin' Squat (aka Mathias Cassel), is a founding member of the rap group Assassin. Vincent's name is mentioned (as "Vinz") in their song Libre. Cassel also has a younger sister of an actress Cécile Cassel. Vincent also had a sister named Olivia.

Education

Since both his parents objected to the idea that he become an actor like his father, Cassel went to circus school at the age of 17 and spent the next few years avoiding acting. He studied at the Maîtrise, a boarding school in Montmartre, then at the École des Roches in Verneuil-Sur-Avre and studied at the Center international de Valbonne.

Cassel studied drama at the Actors Institute in New York before joining Jean-Louis Barrault's theatre company in Paris.

Career

By the late '80s, Cassel took up the art when he landed a small role in Les Cigognes n'en font qu'à leur tête (1989), Later, Philippe de Broca gave Cassel his first notable screen role in Les Clés du paradis (1991) but it was through the self-destructive lead character Vinz in Mathieu Kassovitz's gritty urban drama (1995) that he found stardom, at home and abroad. This role earned Cassel two César nominations in 1996, for Most Promising Actor and Best Actor. Cassel had previously worked with Kassovitz on an earlier film, Metisse (1993), and the two would achieve even greater success with the gory thriller Les Rivières Pourpres (2000).

After completing his first English-speaking film, Jefferson in Paris (1995), he starred in the romantic comedy L'Appartment (1996) where he first met and played opposite his future wife, Italian actress Monica Bellucci. Cassel and Bellucci would appear together in some other films, most notably Gaspar Noé's reverse-narrative thriller Irréversible (2002), and Frédéric Schoendoerffer's action-policier Agents Secrets (2004).

A physical actor endowed with seemingly limitless reserves of energy and charisma, Cassel was ideally suited for action roles. His penchant for playing impulsive heroes and outsiders is demonstrated by his contributions to Jan Kounen's nihilist thriller Dobermann (1997). Continuing his rise in popularity, Cassel worked on popular English and French-speaking films such as Elizabeth (1998) as the Queen's potential husband, Duc d'Anjou in Luc Besson's spectacular The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999), and Christophe Gans's horror extravaganza Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001).

Cassel has also shown a flair for playing more introverted, complex characters, something that makes him as attractive to auteur filmmakers as genre film directors.

For his performance in Jacques Audiard's modern film noir Read My Lips (2001) Cassel received his second César nomination.

By the early 2000s, Vincent Cassel had become one of the most internationally recognized French actors of his generation, so it was inevitable that he would try to break into Hollywood. He starred alongside Nicole Kidman and Ben Chaplin in Jez Butterworth's Birthday Girl (2001), in the company of his old friend Mathieu Kassovitz. He then lent his talents to Steven Soderbergh's popular heist movies Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007).

Back in France, Cassel widened his repertoire by playing a rampant satyr in Jean-Jacques Annaud's fantasy His Majesty Minor (2007). He then met with international acclaim for his portrayal of the notorious gangster Jacques Mesrin in Jean-François Richet's thriller diptych Mesrine (2008) and Mesrine Part 2: Public Enemy #1 (2008), the role that won him his first Best Actor César.

Vincent Cassel's enduring popularity with critics and audiences around the world ensure that he is one of those rare actors who can have his cake and eat it, stretching himself both in mainstream genre hits such as David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method (2011) and auteur oddities like Romain Gavras's Notre jour viendra (2010). In 2011, he played the role of the frisky ballet teacher in the Oscar-nominated film Black Swan. He has also found success as a voice artist, dubbing Hugh Grant in his films for a French audience and providing voices for animated features such as Shrek (2001) and Lascars (2009).

More recently, he was seen in Jason Bourne (2016) and playing the title role in Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti (2018). In 2020 he is set 6to appear in Underwater, American science fiction horror film directed by William Eubank and written by Brian Duffield and Adam Cozad, alongside Kristen Stewart. The movie tells a story of a crew of underwater researchers, who must scramble to safety from ravenous creatures after an earthquake devastates their subterranean laboratory. Underwater is scheduled to be released on January 10, 2020, by 20th Century Fox.

In addition to his impressive film career, he also runs his own film production company, 120 Films, which produces film and music video projects in collaboration with cutting-edge young talent, such as Romain Gavras (the son of acclaimed Greek-born director, Costa Gavras).

Achievements

• 

  Cassel's career spans more than three decades. Throughout these years, Cassel has earned critical acclaim and numerous accolades, including a César Award in 2009 and a Canadian Screen Award in 2016.
  
  Vincent Cassel has starred alongside the crème de la crème of the French and international film industry, notably Natalie Portman, George Clooney, and Michael Fassbender, and has worked with top international film directors such as Darren Aronofsky, Steven Soderbergh, and David Cronenberg.
  
  With his sharp, yet understated sense of style, Vincent Cassel exudes a roguish charisma that landed him a campaign in 2008 as the face of Yves Saint Laurent’s men’s fragrance, La Nuit de l’Homme.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • Shrek

    (Winner of the first Academy Award for Best Animated Featu...)

    2001
  • La Haine

    (Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of ...)

    1995
  • Our Day Will Come

    (In this hallucinatory thriller; two outcast redheads - a ...)

    2010
  • My King

    (Acclaimed auteur Maïwenn's magnum opus about the real and...)

    2015
  • Partisan

    (Raised to become an assassin, 11-year-old Alexander begin...)

    2015
  • The Crimson Rivers

    (Two French policemen, one investigating a grisly murder a...)

    2000
  • Rio, I Love You

    (The series that started 'Paris, je t'aime' and 'New York,...)

    2014
  • Brotherhood of the Wolf

    (Grégoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan), a charming natural...)

    2001
  • Elizabeth

    (This acclaimed epic of the Queen's treacherous rise to po...)

    1998
  • Irreversible

    (Told in reverse chronological order, this graphic, contro...)

    2002
  • Beauty And The Beast

    (An unexpected romance blooms after the youngest daughter ...)

    2016
  • Mesrine Part

    (The first part of an epic two-film saga introduces us to ...)

    2008
  • Robots

    (Genius robot inventor Rodney Copperbottom dreams of makin...)

    2005
  • The Great Mystical Circus

    (Reality and fantasy collide in The Great Mystical Circus,...)

    2016
  • Derailed

    (When two married business executives (Owen and Aniston) h...)

    2005
  • Ice Age

    (When a group of prehistoric animals band together to save...)

    2002
  • Ice Age: The Meltdown

    (When Manny, Sid, and Diego discover that miles of melted ...)

    2006
  • Jason Bourne

    (Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass return for the ne...)

    2016
  • Eastern Promises

    (A ruthless and mysterious enforcer for a Russian crime fa...)

    2007
  • Ocean's Twelve

    (From Academy Award-winning director Steven Soderbergh ("T...)

    2004
  • Guest House Paradiso

    (Richie (Rik Mayall) and Eddie (Adrian Edmondson) are the ...)

    1999
  • The Reckoning

    (An exiled takes up with a traveling band of actors, who t...)

    2003
  • One Wild Moment

    (Two old friends take their daughters on vacation, but thi...)

    2015
  • Its Only The End Of The World

    (After 12 years of estrangement, a writer (Gaspard Ulliel)...)

    2016
  • Black Swan

    (Obsession drives a devoted ballerina (Oscar(R) winner Nat...)

    2010
  • Child 44

    (Exiled secret police officer Leo Demidov (Tom Hardy) disc...)

    2015
  • The Emperor of Paris

    (Francois Vidocq a shady figure in the Parisian underworld...)

    2018
  • Renegade

    (Marshal Mike Blueberry, battles to unite the natives who ...)

    2004
  • Jefferson In Paris

    (Chronicles the time that Thomas Jefferson spent as the Am...)

    1995
  • Trance

    (A thrilling, action-packed brain-twister starring James M...)

    2013
  • The Monk

    (Ambrosio's dedication to God has earned him legions of wo...)

    2011
  • A Dangerous Method

    (Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the drive...)

  • Black Tide

    (Dany, the Arnault family's teenage son, has disappeared. ...)

    2018
  • Read My Lips

    (She is almost deaf and she lip-reads. He is an ex-convict...)

    2001
  • Come Mi Vuoi

    (Pasquale is a policeman in Roma. During a roundup, he mee...)

    1997
  • Tale of Tales

    (Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly are Queen and King in this...)

    2015
  • The Messenger: The Story Of Joan Of Arc

    (The year is 1429. France is in political and religious tu...)

    1999
  • The Apartment

    (Hi, I'm Max. In two months, I'm marrying Muriel. I fell i...)

    1996
  • Ocean's Thirteen

    (It's bolder. Riskier. The most dazzling heist yet. Double...)

    2006
  • Gauguin: Voyage To Tahiti

    (1891. Painter Paul Gauguin is already well-known in Paris...)

    2017
  • L'élève 1996
  • Dobermann 1997
  • Agents Secrets 2004

Views

In 2011, Vincent Cassel was one of the celebrity supporters of Chef Raoni's petition against the Belo Monte Dam, a hydroelectric dam complex on the northern part of the Xingu River in the state of Pará, Brazil. It was the first time in his career that he has agreed to support a cause publicly.

Quotations: "I feel like the so-called bad guys are never totally bad. I guess it's the closest thing I can do to reality: people act nice but nobody really is nice. We all have to balance that with something dark. How we balance it is what makes something interesting... My character in "La Haine," he's not bad, he's unhappy and usually, people are like that. Most of us are angry. Maybe one day I'll play Buddha."

"The minute your parents die, you stop fighting them. I realized the more I changed my face for films, the more I looked like him. I always liked to disguise myself because I was trying to run away from his image. But all that is not worth it. You can't escape from what you are."

Personality

Cassel has a passion for the martial art of capoeira and displayed his talent in the movie Ocean’s Twelve. He also trains in wing chun. Cassel is also a trained ballet dancer, speaks multiple languages - including French, English, Italian, Portuguese, and basic Russian.

With rugged good looks, a devilish smile and a razor-sharp sense of wit, Vincent Cassel is described as a man of hidden depth who is disarmingly charismatic, often outspoken and a bundle of nervous energy. He also says that he is "actually more vulnerable than people imagine." and "a little angry in life."

Quotes from others about the person

• "Vincent Cassel is just a freest of spirits. He has a dancer's soul." - Darren Aronofsky

Interests

• foreign languages, traveling

• Sport & Clubs

  wing chun, capoeira

Connections

Vincent and his first girlfriend Sophie met during boarding school at the age of 11. The couple got separated and hadn’t seen each other for several years. Sophie was later murdered in London.

Cassel started dating model and actress Monica Bellucci in 1996. They both met on the set of L’Appartement and began dating. The couple got married on August 3, 1999, and on August 26, 2013, they confirmed their divorce publicly. Their marriage produced 2 daughters named Deva (born on September 12, 2004) and Léonie (born on May 21, 2010).

Vincent started dating French model Tina Kunakey who is 31 years younger than him in 2015. In August 2016, Tina made her relationship public by posting on a social media site. The duo tied the knot on August 24, 2018, at Bidart, France. In January 2019, Vincent and Tina confirmed about expecting their first child together. Their daughter, Amazonie, was born on 19 April 2019.

Father:

Jean-Pierre Cassel

Mother:

Sabine Litique

Spouse:

Tina Kunakey

ex-spouse:

Monica Bellucci

Brother:

Mathias Cassel

half-sister:

Cécile Cassel

Daughter:

Deva Cassel

Daughter:

Léonie Cassel

Daughter:

Amazonie Cassel

colleague:

Winona Ryder

colleague:

Sebastian Stan

colleague:

Brad Pitt

colleague:

Casey Affleck

colleague:

Willem Dafoe

References

• Vincent Cassel on Facebook
• Vincent Cassel on Instagram