Bruno Cremer

Bruno attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school. Having completed his secondary studies, he followed an interest in acting which had interested him since the age of 12 and trained in acting from 1952 at France's highly selective Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique (English: French National Academy of Dramatic Arts).

His career began with ten years spent acting in live theatre, playing roles drawn from works of Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Jean Anouilh. Aged already 30, he created the role of Thomas Becket in the 1959 world premiere of Anouilh's Becket, and held Anouilh in veneration all his life. Later Cremer played Max in a French production of Bent by Martin Sherman in 1981. He regarded his basic profession as that of a stage actor, though he gravitated firmly to films.

It was in 1957 that Cremer had his first credited part in a film, Quand la femme s'en mêle (When a woman meddles), which starred Alain Delon. However, it was in 1965 that Cremer's career really began to prosper, with the film La 317e section, (The 317th Platoon), directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer and set in Indochina during the French colonial wars. From then onwards, Cremer became a popular actor and appeared in over 110 productions for cinema and television.

While Cremer tried to avoid labels and typecasting, he tended to be offered tough-guy roles, often military men. Examples from various points in his career include Section spéciale (1975), La légion saute sur Kolwezi (1980) and Là-haut, un roi au-dessus des nuages (2004).