Denis Lavant
Trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique, Denis Lavant is a unique and powerful figure in French cinema. A renowned stage actor, he has worked with directors such as Pierre Pradinas, Hans Peter Cloos, Bernard Sobel, Dan Jemmet, James Thierrée, and Jacques Osinzki. Having developed a taste for poetry at a young age, he is also a champion of many underappreciated poets, whose works he regularly reads aloud. In film, he is the emblematic actor of director Leos Carax, from "Boy Meets Girl" in 1983 to "Holy Motors" in 2012, a sensation at the 65th Cannes Film Festival, in which Lavant played eleven roles. He has also acted, among others, under the direction of Patrice Chéreau, Diane Kurys, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Claude Lelouch, Claire Denis, Harmony Korine, Arnaud des Pallières, Wolfgang Becker, Dominique Rocher, Emiliy Atef, Pierre Schoeller, Philippe Lacôt, Mathieu Gérault, François Ozon… For several years Denis Lavant and the director Jacques Ozinski have been taking on the work of Samuel Beckett which earned Denis Lavant a Molière 2025 in a private theatre production for “Endgame”.
“Literature and writing have always been ‘vehicles of fantasy’ for me. I discovered very early on, through poetry, its assonance and wordplay, this immense potential for jubilation that writing holds. I have always written for no reason, for the pleasure of expelling an overflow (of spirit?). If you were in my office, you would find a chaos, but a very organized one, where, among piles of books, notebooks crammed into drawers and filing cabinets, are scattered numerous raw writings in manuscript form; so much material that I struggle to fathom or sort and which remains in the state it was for me, a simple outlet.” Denis Lavant (in Échappées belles – éditions Les impressions nouvelles 2020 – Brussels) Publication: November 3, 2025 Order Press release
