1. Luc Besson directed or produced the films Subway, The Big Blue, and La Femme Nikita.
35 Facts About Luc Besson
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Luc Besson won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element.
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Luc Besson wrote and directed the sci-fi action film Lucy and the space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
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Luc Besson was born in Paris, to parents who both worked as Club Med scuba-diving instructors.
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Luc Besson spent much of his youth traveling with his parents to tourist resorts in Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece.
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Luc Besson's parents divorced, and both remarried; of this, he said:.
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At age 17, Luc Besson had a diving accident that left him unable to dive.
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Luc Besson reportedly worked on the first drafts of Le Grand Bleu while still in his teens.
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At 18, Luc Besson returned to his birthplace of Paris, where he took odd jobs in film to get a feel for the industry.
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Luc Besson worked as an assistant to directors including Claude Faraldo and Patrick Grandperret.
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Luc Besson directed three short films, a commissioned documentary, and several commercials.
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Luc Besson then moved to the United States for three years, but returned to Paris, where he formed his own production company.
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Luc Besson first named it Les Films du Loup, then changed it to Les Films du Dauphin.
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Many of Luc Besson's films have achieved popular, if not always critical, success.
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From 2002 to 2005 Luc Besson created the hugely successful Arthur series of children's fantasy novels, which comprises Arthur and the Minimoys, Arthur and the Forbidden City, Arthur and the Vengeance of Maltazard and Arthur and the War of the Two Worlds.
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Luc Besson directed Arthur and the Invisibles, a feature film adaptation of the first two books of the collection, starring Madonna and Robert DeNiro.
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Luc Besson produced the promotional movie for the Paris 2012 Olympic bid.
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In 2000, Luc Besson superseded his production company by co-founding EuropaCorp with Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, with whom he had frequently worked since 1985.
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The film was a departure from Luc Besson's favoured directorial genres, and from his preference to write the films he directs; the screenwriter was Rebecca Frayn.
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Luc Besson's failure was repeated with his next film, Anna, placing his company in near bankruptcy and forcing him to sell it to a creditor and then close the free, no-degree-required school for screenwriters and directors that he had founded in 2012.
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In 2022, Luc Besson experimented with another kind of filmmaking when he shot Dogman in a virtual production facility in France, as well as on location in New Jersey.
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In summer 2024, Luc Besson directed Dracula: A Love Tale, an adaptation of Dracula starring Caleb Landry Jones and featuring Christophe Waltz.
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In 2025 Luc Besson was announced as the director of The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic science fiction film starring rapper Snoop Dogg.
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French actor Jean Reno has appeared in several films by Luc Besson, including, Subway, The Big Blue, La Femme Nikita, and Leon: The Professional.
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Luc Besson directed and co-wrote the screenplay of his science fiction thriller The Fifth Element with American screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen.
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Luc Besson later collaborated with Kamen on the Transporter action series, and they co-wrote Taken, Taken 2, and Taken 3, which all starred Liam Neeson.
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Luc Besson has been described as "the most Hollywood of French filmmakers".
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Luc Besson wrote that Besson dramatizes the struggle of his characters "as a conscientious resistance to human degradation".
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Luc Besson has been married four times; first, in 1986, to actress Anne Parillaud.
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Luc Besson married Jovovich on December 14,1997, when he was 38 and she was 21.
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The director's lawyer Thierry Marembert stated that Luc Besson "categorically denies these fantasist accusations" and that the accuser was "someone he knows, towards whom he has never behaved inappropriately".
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In December 2021, a judge dismissed the case against Luc Besson following a second investigation.
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In June 2023, Luc Besson was definitively cleared of all charges, following a ruling by the Court of Cassation, the highest judicial court in France.
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Luc Besson won the Lumieres Award for Best Director and the Cesar Award for Best Director, for his film The Fifth Element.
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Luc Besson was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture Cesar Awards for his films Leon: The Professional and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.