François Truffaut

François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor and critic, widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. As a young man, he came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin, who hired him to write for his ''Cahiers du Cinéma''. It was there that he became an exponent of the auteur theory, which said the director is the true author of the film. ''The 400 Blows'' (1959), starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut's alter-ego Antoine Doinel, was a defining film of the New Wave. Truffaut supplied the story for another milestone of the movement, ''Breathless'' (1960), directed by his ''Cahiers'' colleague Jean-Luc Godard.

His other notable films include ''Shoot the Piano Player'' (1960), ''Jules and Jim'' (1962), ''The Soft Skin'' (1964), ''Two English Girls'' (1971) and ''The Last Metro'' (1980). Truffaut's ''Day for Night'' (1973) earned him the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He played the doctor in ''The Wild Child'' (1970), the director of the film-within-the-film in ''Day For Night'' and the scientist in Steven Spielberg's ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' (1977). He starred in ''The Green Room'' (1978), based on Henry James's "The Altar of the Dead". He wrote ''Hitchcock/Truffaut'' (1966), a book-length interview with his hero Alfred Hitchcock which tied for second on ''Sight and Sound''s list of the greatest books on film. Truffaut paid homage to Hitchcock in ''The Bride Wore Black'' (1968), ''Mississippi Mermaid'' (1969) and his last film, ''Confidentially Yours'' (1981).

He was married from 1957 until 1964 to Madeleine Morgenstern, in 1968 became engaged to leading actress Claude Jade from three of his films, and lived together with Fanny Ardant, actress in his two last films, until his death. David Thomson writes that "for many people who love film Truffaut will always seem like the most accessible and engaging crest of the New Wave." Provided by Wikipedia