Career
Cassel's breakthrough role was in Mathieu Kassovitz's critically acclaimed film La Haine where he played a troubled youth from the deprived outskirts of Paris. He has gone on to act in a variety of films such as the moody L'Appartement (with Monica Bellucci before they married), the violent Dobermann, the genre-bending Le Pacte des Loups (in English, Brotherhood of the Wolf), and the highly controversial Irréversible, where he appears fully nude (with Monica Bellucci after they married).
Cassel has also done a number of English-language films, such as Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, Derailed, Birthday Girl, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, Elizabeth, Eastern Promises, and Shrek (as the voice of Monsieur Hood), and in the Portuguese-language, Brazilian film Adrift (À Deriva). In 2006, he appeared in Sheitan, in which he played a shepherd who carries out satanic rituals. In 2008, he appeared in two movies about Jacques Mesrine, who was France's "public enemy number one" in the seventies. Cassel received the 2009 Cesar award for best actor for his performance in Mesrine directed by Jean-Francois Richet.
An early appearance on British television was as Nicole's boyfriend in the 1994 Renault Clio advert which was used in the UK.
In October 2008, Cassel was signed to be the face of a new Yves Saint Laurent men's fragrance. The new fragrance, La Nuit de l'Homme, was launched worldwide in March 2009.
French film historian Tim Palmer describes Cassel as one of the most charismatic and idiosyncratic of all France's contemporary stars, working in both popular and more intellectual modes of cinema, typically playing characters that veer unpredictably between positive/alluring and negative/grotesque -- often, in fact, within a single role and performance.
In 2009, he made his debut as a singer on Zap Mama's album ReCreation, singing alongside them on the singles "Paroles, Paroles" and "Non, Non, Non."
He played Thomas Leroy in Darren Aronofsky's critically acclaimed Black Swan (2010), alongside Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.
Read more about this topic: Vincent Cassel
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
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“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
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“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
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