Mathieu Kassovitz

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Mathieu Kassovitz

Born	3 August 1967 Paris, France

Mathieu Kassovitz (born 3 August 1967 in Paris) is a French director, screenwriter, occasional actor and is considered one of contemporary France's top young film talents. He is the son of director Peter Kassovitz, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary, and a Roman Catholic French mother.

As a filmmaker, Kassovitz has a number of artistic and commercial successes under his belt. He wrote and directed La Haine (1995), a hugely successful film in France and internationally which won the César Award for Best Film and netted Kassovitz the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He later directed Les Rivières Pourpres (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another massive commercial success in France, and Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller (considered by some to be commercial failure, although it grossed over twice its roughly $40 million budget), with Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz that he did to earn the money he needed to develop a far more personal project Babylon Babies, the adaptation of one of Maurice Dantec's books.

As an actor, Kassovitz is most famous outside France for his role as Nino Quincampoix in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film Amélie. Among many other credits, he also had small roles in La Haine (which he also directed), Birthday Girl, Café Au Lait and The Fifth Element. He also played one of the main roles in Amen (2003) by Costa-Gavras and a conflicted Belgian explosives expert in Steven Spielberg's controversial 2005 film Munich, alongside Eric Bana and Geoffrey Rush. He explained several times he accepted acting parts only for the experience of knowing what it is to act, to be able to be a better director of actors afterward, to meet directors he admires and learn from them by working with them, and to take part in great projects.

He is married to French ex-actress Julie Mauduech, whom he directed and acted alongside with in his 1993 film Métisse (Café au lait, English title) and who made a short appearance in La Haine (during the scene in the Parisian art gallery). They have a daughter. Julie Mauduech is now a costume designer for movies.