Jean-Pierre Kalfon

Jean-Pierre Kalfon has frequently appeared in French movies centered on murder, sometimes as an officer of the law and sometimes as the murder victim himself. In "The Cry of the Owl," Claude Chabrol's tale of murder, faked deaths, revenge, and suicide, Kalfon played a police commissioner trying to make sense of the movie's byzantine plot. In François Truffaut's "Confidentially Yours," the last film ever made by the French New Wave director, Kalfon played the murdered Massoulier, whose mysterious death sets off a bizarre police investigation. Kalfon has also played royalty, receiving his second César nomination for his portrayal of Louis XIV in "The King's Daughters," the 2000 film about a woman's attempts to create a boarding school for the daughters of French aristocrats. During his career, he appeared in a couple of American productions. One of these was the 1980 thriller "The Dogs of War." The film was based on Frederick Forsyth's novel of the same name, and depicted a group of mercenaries hired to overthrow an African country's ruling military junta. Interestingly enough, some people suspect that the book was inspired by Forsyth's own involvement in plans to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, though such claims have never been proven.