Jean-Paul Belmondo became part of cinema history with his performance as Michel Poiccard, the antihero of Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking New Wave feature "Breathless" (1959). The actor developed into one of the key actors of the 'New Wave' and was a major international star by the early 1970s. With the looks of a boxer rather than a movie star, Belmondo has projected a simultaneously tough, yet thoughtful and highly sensuous persona in such diverse films as Philippe De Broca's "That Man From Rio" (1964), Godard's "Pierrot le fou" (1965), Francois Truffaut's "Mississippi Mermaid" (1969) and
