Michel Constantin

1924–2003 · French actor of crime and adventure films, former volleyball player and sports journalist

Biography

Michel Constantin (1924-2003) was a French actor who became a familiar face in crime and adventure films of the 1960s and 1970s. He usually played thugs and gangsters, and his imposing physique and steady screen presence made him a reliable character actor. Before acting, he had built a notable career as a sportsman and journalist.

Born Constantin Hokhloff, he came from a family of Russian and Polish emigres. He worked at the Renault factories during the Second World War and later ran a textile machinery business. He was also a strong volleyball player, serving as captain of the French national team and winning domestic titles with CO Billancourt in the 1950s. He also wrote about sport for the newspaper L'Equipe.

His film career began in the late 1950s with the prison drama The Hole, directed by Jacques Becker, in which his unreadable face suited a convict role. He then appeared in a string of policiers, including Melville's Le Deuxieme Souffle, and gained new momentum when José Giovanni cast him as an adventurer in The Law of the Survivor. In the 1970s he often shared the screen with his friend Charles Bronson, and he worked with Georges Lautner, Yves Boisset, Jacques Deray and Henri Verneuil, among others.

He also hosted the game show Anagram on French television for a period in the 1980s and published his autobiography in 1973. He died in 2003 of cancer. He is remembered in part through bridge, a hobby he took seriously, and through a memorial tournament held by his club since 2011.

Key films

A Man Named Rocca (1961): a gangster role in one of his early action films, where the hard-edged characters that later made him known began to take shape.
Le Deuxieme Souffle (1966): directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, this is one of his best-regarded collaborations in French crime cinema.
Cold Sweat (1970): directed by Terence Young, an international production in which he shares the cast with Charles Bronson.
Violent City (1970): directed by Sergio Sollima, a good example of his work in European crime cinema of the period.