Jean Reno is a talented linguist. He's fluent in French, Spanish, Italian and English and he also speaks a language of his own. Renoise is a lively blend of Franglais, goggle-eyed gesticulations and guttural noises. "Oooh, in the mind, urrr," he says clutching his head. "Booourr," he exclaims, puffing up his chest. "Pfffssst," comes with a dismissive slice of the hand; "ppough, ppough," with a mimed pistol shot. And his final comment is prefaced with a re-enactment of scaling a wall and falling backwards with an imaginary rifle slung across his shoulders. It all makes perfect sense.
His expressiveness is far from the fastidious calm of the assassin he played in Leon, the film that brought Reno fame outside France 13 years ago. Since then, the 58-year-old has become Hollywood's favorite Frenchman or, in Renoise, a "damn shit frog." He has been the glowering European presence (which in Hollywood usually means either shifty or morally compromised) in a succession of blockbusters from Mission: Impossible to Godzilla and The Da Vinci Code. His latest role is at the heart of another big-budget American action movie, Flyboys, where Reno plays the straight-backed, cane-twirling French commander of a squadron of American pilots who volunteer to fight the Germans in the World War I.
Sitting in his office on an elegant street off the Champs Elysees, Reno has another battle on his mind. Every few moments he lifts his eyes — his characteristic dark bags beneath almost erased by tan and good health — to a large TV bringing live news of the French presidential election.
The actor is taking a close personal interest because Nicolas Sarkozy, who duly won, was best man at Reno's wedding to his third wife, Zofia Borucka, last summer. The two men have been "very" good friends since meeting when they were neighbors for 10 years. They bonded while taking their dogs for evening walks and, says Reno slightly lugubriously, chatting about his failing marriage and Sarkozy's political struggles. "I was divorcing and he was in trouble with the politics. My ex-wife had a dog and we were with the two dogs, every night, going, 'How are you?' Not too much politics, because I'm not a politician. Just, 'How are you?' And that's the best way to become a good friend. Then you speak about women, life, divorce, the kids, and wine — avoiding politics. Because a politician is a cold-blooded animal." Do you think? "Yeah," he laughs. Completely different to an actor.
Reno shares with Sarkozy a great enthusiasm for most things Anglo-Saxon (Reno's current wife was born in London), and he hopes his friend can transform France. "He's kind of Tony Blair," he says. "He had a difficult road. Him and Chirac, they fought. Wow. Ppough, ppough." He mimes a shoot-out which, as you would expect from someone who has cornered the assassin-secret agent market, is rather realistic.
How will Sarkozy change France? "Less socialism. He will be good for the economy, because we have to work a little bit more. I think we are the only country where we have a 35-hour working week, that famous law, and it is forbidden to work more." He chuckles. "C'est incroyable. It's unbelievable. So he will change the taxes and we will be more involved in Europe. Yes, we have to be."
Reno may appear the archetypal Frenchman to British or American audiences but his background is far more complex. He was born in Morocco to Spanish parents and was raised in the multicultural port of Casablanca. In 1968, he left to enlist in the French army because national service was mandatory to obtain French citizenship. After becoming a drama student in Paris and doing theater for a decade, he hooked up for the first time with the director Luc Besson in 1981, going on to work on Subway, The Big Blue, Nikita and Leon, in which Reno made his name. In 1993, his comic turn in Jean-Marie Poire's smash-hit Les Visiteurs cemented his A-list status in France.
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