В© Provided by The TelegraphД«elmondo in Philippe de Broca's 'Chinese Adventures in China' with Ursula Andress, with whom he had an affair - Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images Though he played for Godard, it was always in his off-the-cuff pictures A Bout de Souffle, Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961) and Pierrot le Fou (1965) вЂ“ where any pretensions could be masked by an air of Je mвЂ™en foutisme. He had little time for вЂњartyвЂќ pictures, accepting Peter BrookвЂ™s Moderato Cantabile only because he wanted to act with Jeanne Moreau and regretting it afterwards.

A pity that they acted together only once in a rather untypical comedy, Un Singe en Hiver (1962).Д«elmondo was a вЂњphilistineвЂќ and proud of it. Gabin, indeed, hailed him as the only actor who could take his place. He was the archetypal Gallic tough-guy for the second half of the 20th century as Jean Gabin had been for the first. His forte, at least in his early years, was action and violence. Then, suddenly, I was holding them in my arms.вЂќ В© Provided by The TelegraphД«elmondo on the set of Robert Enrico's Ho! - Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images вЂњOne minuteвЂќ, he said, вЂњI was reading CinГ©ma Monde and drooling over pictures of Gina, Sophia and Brigitte Bardot. He was pug-ugly, like Humphrey Bogart, Jack Palance and Mick Jagger, with fleshy lips and a broken nose (the legacy of a playground punch-up in youth).Д«ut, like many men with irregular features, he generated an atmosphere of danger and excitement that wove its spell on women from a variety of different backgrounds вЂ“ Jean SebergвЂ™s American student abroad in A Bout de Souffle shy, repressed Jeanne Moreau in Moderato Cantabile (1960) earthy Claudia Cardinale in La Viaccia in 1961 and the cool, elegant ice maiden played by Catherine Deneuve in La SirГЁne du Mississippi (1969).

Jean-Paul Belmondo in A Bout de Souffle - Film Stills/British Lion Films LtdДЄt first glance, he seemed an unlikely icon. So charismatic was his screen image in those years that a вЂњwannabeвЂќ cult sprang up around him, popularly known as вЂњle belmondismeвЂќ. When Jean-Luc Godard chose him to play a petty car thief without respect for conventional morality in A Bout de Souffle (вЂњBreathlessвЂќ, 1960), Belmondo came to define the devil-may-care flippancy of contemporary youth as surely as James Dean had done for his generation in the mid Fifties. Jean-Paul Belmondo, who has died aged 88, was more than any other actor the face of the French New Wave. Jean-Paul Belmondo with Jean Seberg in A Bout de Souffle - Alamy

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