Belmondo’s most memorable movies

From the cool thug roving the Champs-Elysees to a globetrotting action man and swashbuckling adventurer, here are some of the most striking roles played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, who has died aged 88.

– ‘Breathless’ (1960) –

In the Parisian love story that launched his career and the French New Wave internationally, Belmondo plays a petty crook who meets a grim end in an alley after falling for a young American girl.

– ‘Leon Morin, Priest’ (1961) –

Donning a cassock and collar in Jean-Pierre Melville’s World War II film noir, Belmondo shows gravitas and subtle sexual tension as a French priest in the grips of a moral dilemma during the Occupation.

– ‘Cartouche’ (1962) –

Belmondo joins Jean Rochefort and Claudia Cardinale for Philippe de Broca’s swashbuckling 18th-century romp about a gang of robbers that delighted audiences.

– ‘Pierrot le fou’ (1964) –

With his blue-painted face and yellow explosives tied to his body, Belmondo stages a memorable art-house suicide in Jean-Luc Godard’s experimental road trip. It charts a family man’s disenchantment with modern life that prompts him to take off to the Mediterranean with the babysitter.

– ‘That Man From Rio’ (1964) –

Excelling again as the action hero in this fast-paced Oscar-nominated James Bond spoof also by de Broca, Belmondo’s jaunt to Brazil to see his fiancee turns into a mad-cap adventure to save her from kidnappers.

– ‘Is Paris Burning?’ (1966) –

His only major role in an English-language film, Belmondo joins a host of Hollywood stars including Kirk Douglas and Orson Welles for this elaborate wartime epic about the liberation of Paris.

– ‘Itinerary of a Lost Child’ (1988) –

Belmondo won a Cesar — a French Oscar — for his portrayal of a foundling raised in a circus who loses his moral compass when he becomes a businessman in Claude Lelouch’s saga on modern values.