Jean-Marie Frin

In 2010, Jean-Marie Frin was internationally acclaimed for playing Brother Paul, the ex-paratrooper and plumber trapped in an Algerian monastery, in Xavier Beauvois's fact-based drama "Of Gods and Men." Yet Frin had been a familiar face on French screens for two decades. He made his feature bow in the flashbacking Boileau-Narcejac thriller "Entangled" and stole scenes in Alain Chabat's "Didier," as the gangster owner of the football club whose new star player is really a magically transformed Labrador retriever. However, he was mostly seen in teleplays during the 1990s, notably playing Pauline Bureau's teacher in the mother-daughter saga "Telle mére, telle fille" and murder suspect Audrey Tautou's father in "Les Boiteux: Baby Blues." He also took the recurring roles of the tribunal president in the courtroom series "Boulevard du Palais" and the mayor in the mountain rescue show "Sauvetage." In 2002, he returned to the big screen as Louis in Brian De Palma's teasing Cannes heist thriller "Femme Fatale" and as Judith Godréche's father in Sophie Marceau's account of a disintegrating marriage, "Speak to Me of Love." Frin took further fatherly roles opposite Lisa Martino in the TV movie "Par accident" and Sylvia Etcheto in the featurette "Céleste" before playing a crook in Mabrouk El Mechri's boxing drama, "Virgil." However, in 2006, he atoned for the latter ill by playing the Father Superior in an episode of the undercover cop series "Léa Parker."