Gilles Lellouche — Director | Biography, Movies & Career

Biography

Gilles Lellouche (born 5 July 1972) is a French actor and director. Most known for his performances in Tell No One (2006), Mesrine (2008), Little White Lies (2010), The Players (2012), The Connection (2014), C'est la vie! (2017), In Safe Hands (2018) and BAC Nord (2020). For his performances, Lellouche was nominated for numerous acting César Awards, including twice for Best Actor for In Safe Hands and BAC Nord.

As filmmaker, he directed Sink or Swim (2018) and Beating Hearts (2025), for which he was nominated twice for the César Award for Best Director.

Lellouche was born in Savigny-sur-Orge, France, to a father of Algerian-Jewish descent, and to a mother of Irish Catholic background. His brother Philippe Lellouche is also an actor and director.

From 2002 to 2013, Lellouche was in a relationship with actress Mélanie Doutey, with whom he had a daughter, born on 5 September 2009.

Since 2015, Lellouche has been in a relationship with former model and jewelry designer Alizée Guinochet, with whom he had a son, born in November 2022.

In January 2017, following the backlash over director Roman Polanski being appointed as the president of the 2017 César Awards while being convicted of sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl and being a fugitive from justice since 1978, Lellouche expressed his support for the director in an interview with Le Parisien, saying; "In France, we make controversies of everything. We die of this in this country. In my opinion, you have to be consistent. Polanski has lived in France for forty years. The facts he was accused of precede this arrival. For all these years, he has been doing films! At that time, it had to be forbidden to live in our territory or to work here. But we welcomed him, we gave him awards, we praise him since he is a big director and he is part of the history of cinema. I am not excusing the facts. But why, today more than yesterday, should there be a scandal? What's going on with us? Have we become Americans? I don't agree with that." [...] "We have many people in France that we have things to criticize and who are still in political, social or economic life. We did not put them in prison, we did not make controversies. Even the victim is tired of this story! To make a scandal only today because he is the president of the Césars, it does not make sense." Polanski later dropped out of presiding over the Césars after the backlash, which included a 61,000-signature petition and calls to boycott the ceremony.

Source: Article "Gilles Lellouche" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.