Jean-Paul Belmondo, the iconic star of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (above, with Jean Seberg) and of numerous other French New Wave films, is in Los Angeles to accept the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's career achievement award.
Belmondo was also supposed to introduce a Los Angeles County Museum of Art screening of François Truffaut's 1969 drama Mississippi Mermaid, in which he co-starred with Catherine Deneuve. Unfortunately, the actor had to bow out because he's never fully recovered his health following a severe stroke a few years back.
Mark Olsen reports in his Los Angeles Times blog that Mathieu Fournet, executive director of the film and TV office of the consulate general of France in Los Angeles, spoke to Belmondo on Friday. He told the audience that Belmondo "is feeling sick tonight and is extremely tired. He needs to rest." According to Fournet, this is Belmondo's first visit to Los Angeles in 20 years.
Among the 76-year-old actor's other credits are Leon Morin, Priest (1961), The Finger Man (1962), Weekend at Dunkirk (1964), That Man from Rio (1964), Borsalino (1970), and more recently, Les Miserables (1995) and A Man and His Dog (2008).
In Youth in Revolt, Michael Cera's character tries to impress a girl who's a Belmondo fan. (Something similar took place in Gérard Lauzier's 1984 film P'tit con.) Olsen adds in his article that Cera was spotted in the audience.