Luc Besson's Real Name: Luc Besson

Quick answer: Luc Besson's documented public name is Luc Besson. Encyclopedia.com dates his birth to March 18, 1959, in Paris, France, and uses that professional name. A 2006 Guardian interview independently discusses him as Luc Besson, then 47, which is compatible with a 1959 birth, and does not use a longer legal form (Encyclopedia.com; The Guardian).

Real name and early life

He is known professionally as Luc Besson. Encyclopedia.com, in an entry last updated in 2018, gives the name Luc Besson and a Paris birth on March 18, 1959, and says his father and mother were both scuba diving instructors. The Guardian interview, by Xan Brooks and dated 21 July 2006, calls him Luc Besson, 47, "France's most successful living director," without a birth date or place. Those accounts agree on the public name; a longer form sometimes seen on later reference sites is not used in these sources, so this biography titles Luc Besson.

Career highlights

Encyclopedia.com lists him as a director, producer, and writer, founder of the production company Les Films du Loup, and later chief executive officer of EuropaCorp in Paris. Credits and honors in that entry include early awards for Le Dernier Combat, later César nominations for Subway and The Big Blue, further nominations for Nikita and Léon, a 1998 César Award for best director for The Fifth Element, and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. It also records a 1998 BAFTA Film Award for Nil by Mouth, a film associated with his producing work, and service as jury president at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000. The Guardian independently groups the stylized action of Nikita and Léon with the science-fiction of The Fifth Element, and discusses the 1999 Joan of Arc film, plus then-new work Angel-A and Arthur and the Minimoys. In that 2006 interview Besson said he intended to stop after 10 films he was proud of, describing cinema as a young art form, and that he would rather stop too soon than too late.

Name notes for searchers

Luc Besson is the name used in both Encyclopedia.com and the Guardian. Searchers looking for the director of Nikita, Léon, or The Fifth Element are usually aiming at the same person.