Jean-Marc Barr

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Jean-Marc Barr (born on 27 September 1960 in Bitburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany) is a French-American film actor and director. His mother is French. His American father was in the US Air Force and served in the Second World War. Jean-Marc Barr is primarily known as an actor, but is also a film director, screenwriter and producer. Barr is bilingual in French and English: he speaks French with a nasal, hybrid accent, reminiscent of his American upbringing - with a slight American accent and occasional anglicisms in interviews - and English with a Mid-Atlantic accent.

He studied philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Paris Conservatoire and the Sorbonne. He went on to pursue an education in drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. In London he met his future wife, a pianist and composer Irina Dečermić.

Jean-Marc Barr began working in theatre in France in 1986. After some television roles and film work, in particular, Hope and Glory (1987) by John Boorman, he was cast in the tremendously successful The Big Blue (1988). Luc Besson cast him in the role of French diver Jacques Mayol. He played in the role opposite Rosanna Arquette and Jean Reno. The Big Blue was the most financially successful film in France in the 1980s.