Jean-Pierre Léaud

Despite having allied himself with Truffaut (Leaud also gave adequate performances in 1971's "Two English Girls" and 1973's "Day For Night"), the actor also forged working relationships with several of the key figures of the New Wave, most notably Jean-Luc Godard. "Masculin-Feminin" (1966) offered Leaud a role not dissimilar for Doinel, a hopeless romantic searching for true love. He received some notice as the callow central figure in a love triangle in "La Maman et la putain/The Mother and the Whore" (1973). But after Truffaut's untimely death, Leaud seemingly lost interest while continuing to work. Reportedly dealing with personal problems, he became a much more haunted screen presence, often cast as filmmakers (e.g., Godard's "The Rise and Fall of a Small Film Company" 1986; Olivier Assayas' "Irma Vep" 1996) or neurotics (i.e., the father in "Paris at Dawn" 1991). The eternal question posed at the end of "The Four Hundred Blows" seems as appropriate in the 90s as it did in 1959: what was to become of this person? It is one only time could answer.