Philippe Nahon

Hard-working French actor Philippe Nahon is known for his many performances in French horror and thriller films. He made his film debut in 1962 in the classic gangster picture "Le Doulos," directed by Jean-Pierre Melville, disciple of American film noir. It would be a decade before Nahon acted again in film, but he then began a steady career in supporting roles in a broad range of French films, TV shows, and TV movies. He gained international notoriety as the lead in "I Stand Alone," Gaspar Noé's disturbing drama in which Nahon's character, the butcher, struggles with life on the outside after a stint in prison. This film, as well as Noé's subsequent "Irreversible," also featuring Nahon, have been criticized as insistently brutal with few redeeming qualities. Nahon played a smaller role in the period thriller about a mythical beast stalking the French forests, "Brotherhood of the Wolf," before becoming the hunter of horror maven Alexandre Aja's "High Tension." Working outside his typical genres, Nahon appeared in "Eldorado," in which a man catches a thief in his house and decides to drive the man home, and "Mammuth," featuring Gerard Depardieu as a retiree fighting to secure his pension.