Richard Berry (1950) is a French actor, film director and screenwriter. He has appeared in nearly 100 films since 1972.
French postcard by Editions Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. ST-62.
French postcard by Ciné-Temaris. Photo: M. Jamet. Dominique Sanda and Richard Berry in Une chambre en ville / A Room in Town (Jacques Demy, 1982).
Richard Berry was born Richard Élie Benguigui in 1950 into a Jewish family in Oran, in French Algeria. He is the son of Moïse (Maurice) Benguigui and Stella Valency Levy, who were shopkeepers. When he was 14, his father changed his surname to ‘Berry’. Richard, his sister Marie-Claire and his brother Philippe grew up in the working-class neighbourhood of Bonne-Nouvelle, Paris, and later in Boulogne-Billancourt, where their parents ran a ready-to-wear shop. His brother Philippe Berry is a sculptor and the former husband of actress Josiane Balasko. In 1966, as a pupil at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, the 16-year-old developed a passion for the theatre, joined an amateur theatre group and developed a fondness for the classics by Racine, Corneille, Molière and Beaumarchais. Berry entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique – CNSAD (French National Academy of Dramatic Arts) in 1969.
In 1973, Berry joined the Comédie-Française and remained until 1980, during which time he performed in around twenty classical plays. He started his film career with a bit part in the drama Absences répétées / Repeated Absences (Guy Gilles, 1972). In 1978, he had his breakthrough opposite Anouk Aimée in the romantic drama Mon premier amour / My First Love (Élie Chouraqui, 1978). It is the sentimental story of the relationship between a lovely mother and her 20-year-old son who never really knew her. When he learns that she is dying of leukaemia, he tries to get to know her. From then on, he made four or five films a year.
In the crime drama Le Grand Pardon (Alexandre Arcady, 1982), he played the son of Jewish gangster Roger Hanin. Arcady would direct him in several films. Another success was La Balance / The Nark (Bob Swaim, 1982) starring Nathalie Baye and Philippe Léotard. It won the César Award for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress, and was nominated for Most Promising Actor (twice), Best Director, Best Writing - Original and Best Editing. The film had more than 4 million admissions in France, becoming the 5th highest-grossing film of the year.
Berry co-starred with Dominique Sanda and Danielle Darrieux in Une chambre en ville / A Room in Town (Jacques Demy, 1982), a musical in which every line of dialogue is sung. Eleanor Mannikka at AllMovie: “Enhanced by excellent choreography, this film still did poorly at the box office when it was first released. In order to save it and encourage audiences to see it for its own merits, 76 French critics took out an ad in Le Monde to promote the film, and some critics said that if this movie failed, so would all of French cinema. Perhaps it is not surprising then that Chambre En Ville won the French Critics' Prix Méliès in 1982.” Other films included the thrillers La Garce / The Bitch (Christine Pascal, 1984) starring Isabelle Huppert, and Lune de miel / Honeymoon (Patrick Jamain, 1985) with Nathalie Baye.
He had a big role next to Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée in Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjà / A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (Claude Lelouch, 1986), a sequel to Lelouch's classic Un homme et une femme (1966). With Isabelle Huppert, he also appeared in the French–Yugoslavian drama film Seobe / Migrations (Aleksandar Petrović, 1988). And he played painter Amedeo Modigliani in Modí (Franco Brogi Taviani, 1989).
French postcard. Sent by mail in 1986.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron. Photo: Richard Berry and Patrick Bruel in L'Union Sacrée / Brothers in Arms (Alexandre Arcady, 1989).
During the 1990s, Richard Berry starred in a stream of interesting French films. He played the lead in the drama L'entraînement du champion avant la course / The Drive Champion Before the Race (Bernard Favre, 1991), which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.
He played a banker with a criminal father (Roger Hanin) in the sequel Le Grand Pardon II / Day of Atonement (Alexandre Arcady, 1992). The film, shot in France and the US, also features the American film stars Christopher Walken, Jill Clayburgh and Jennifer Beals. He co-starred with Claudia Cardinale and Omar Sharif in 588 rue paradis / Mother (1992), a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by French-Armenian filmmaker Henri Verneuil.
He received a César nomination for his lead in the French-Swiss drama Le Petit Prince a Dit / And the Little Prince Said (Christine Pascal, 1992), which follows an estranged Swiss couple (Berry and Anémone) who re-evaluate their relationship with the discovery of their daughter's terminal illness. For his role, he won the Best Actor Award at the Montreal Film Festival. Then he played the title role in the French-Belgian drama Le joueur de violon / The Violin Player (Charles Van Damme, 1994), which was entered into the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.
Another critical success was L'Appât / The Bait (Bertrand Tavernier, 1995) about two boys and a girl who commit a murder, with the girl acting as a 'bait'. The film is based on the 1990 book by Morgan Sportès, which is in turn based on a true event in 1984. The film won the Golden Bear Award at the 45th Berlin International Film Festival.
Next he appeared with Patrick Timsit in the gay comedy Pédale douce / Soft Pedal (Gabriel Aghion, 1996), for which their co-star Fanny Ardant won the 1997 César Award for Best Actress. Timsit directed him in Quasimodo d'El Paris (Patrick Timsit, 1999), a comedic adaptation of the novel 'Notre-Dame de Paris' (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) by Victor Hugo. He co-starred with Jacqueline Bisset in the dramedy Les Gens qui s'aiment / People Who Love Each Other (Jean-Charles Tacchella, 1999).
French autograph postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris. Richard Berry and Josiane Balasko.
French postcard by Editions Photomania, Paris, no. P 238. Photo: Chimène Lasserre.
French postcard. Photo: Hachette Première / BAC Films. Richard Berry in Quasimodo d'El Paris (Patrick Timsit, 1999). Captions: (Front:) You shall turn away from prostitutes! (Back:) Frollo: "Lambs of God, before the Almighty’s thunderbolt strikes your straying souls, return to the right path of light. Hallelujah!"
Richard Berry continued to be a major French star in the new Millennium. He starred in the comedy 15 Août / 15 August (Patrick Alessandrin, 2001) about several middle-aged men who have a crisis on their hands when their wives depart, leaving them to look after the boisterous kids. Berry was the treacherous boss of Jean-Pierre Darroussin in Ah! Si j'étais riche / If I Were a Rich Man (Gérard Bitton, Michel Munz, 2002). He co-starred in the hilarious comedy-crime caper Tais toi! / Shut up! / Ruby & Quentin (Francis Veber, 2003) starring Jean Reno and Gérard Depardieu.
His film Moi César, 10 ans 1/2, 1m39 / I, Cesar (Richard Berry, 2003) was inspired by his childhood, which was sometimes painful. Berry also directed the mystery La Boîte noire / The Black Box (2005), which he also wrote with Éric Assous, adapted from a novella by Tonino Benacquista. The film starred José Garcia and Marion Cotillard. He had a supporting part in the comedy La doublure / The Valet (Francis Veber, 2006). In 2008, he reunited with Patrick Timsit for a remake of the black comedy L' Emmerdeur / A Pain In The Ass (Édouard Molinaro, 1973) about the unlikely friendship between a hitman (in 1973 Lino Ventura) and a suicidal guy (in 1973 Jacques Brel). The new L' Emmerdeur (2008) was directed by farce master Francis Veber, who had also written the original version.
Berry himself directed the action thriller L'immortel / 22 Bullets (Richard Berry, 2009) with Jean Reno, based on the novel 'L'Immortel' by Franz-Olivier Giesbert. He appeared in Avant l'hiver / Winter Rose (Philippe Claudel, 2013) with Daniel Auteuil and Kristin Scott Thomas. He directed and acted in the crime thriller-drama Tout, tout de suite (Richard Berry, 2016). Written by Richard Berry and Morgan Sportès, it is based on a novel by Sportès which was in turn inspired by the events of the Affair of the Gang of Barbarians in 2006. The Gang of Barbarians (les barbares) were the kidnappers and murderers of Ilan Halimi (Hebrew: אילן חלימי), a young Frenchman of Moroccan Jewish ancestry in France in 2006. The case drew national and international attention as an example of antisemitism in France.
He played a supporting part in the romantic drama Eva (Benoît Jacquot, 2018) based on the 1945 novel 'Eve' by James Hadley Chase, and starring Isabelle Huppert and Gaspard Ulliel. In 2018, he staged Matthieu Aron’s 'Plaidoiries'at the theatre. He performed the play, based on five major legal arguments, including that of Gisèle Halimi at the Bobigny trial in 1972, alone on stage. In 2019, 'Plaidoiries' won an award at the Globes de Cristal in the ‘Best Play’ category. In 2019, he played the lead role in Arnaud Sélignac’s TV film La Loi de Damien, in which he took on the role of a lawyer to defend a seemingly hopeless case. In 2025, he appeared in the French film La Tournée (Florian Hessique, 2025).
Richard Berry was married three times. First with actress and photographer Jessica Forde and later with Jeane Manson. He is the father of the actresses Coline Berry (1976) from his relationship with actress Catherine Hiegel, and Joséphine Berry (1992) with Jessica Forde. In 2005, he donated a kidney to his sister Marie-Claire Berry, to whom he is very close and who was then suffering from end-stage kidney failure due to Alport syndrome, a genetic condition. In 2005, Marie-Claire wrote a book about her illness, 'Le Don de soi'. Since 2009, he has been in a relationship with actress Pascale Louange, with whom he has a daughter, Caroline, born in 2014. The couple have been married since 2016. On 2 February 2021, it was revealed that Berry's daughter Coline had recently filed a complaint with Paris prosecutors alleging incest and sexual abuse by Berry. In a story on his Instagram account, Berry claimed Coline made the allegation for the first time seven years prior, writing: "As I announced to my family (in 2014) that my wife and I were expecting a child, Coline, herself pregnant, reacted with extreme violence, then, in an email sent to my wife, she for the first time alluded to the fact that she [had] been 'abused'."
French poster postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 157. French affiche by Landi par Spadem for La Balance / The Nark (Bob Swaim, 1982) with Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard and Richard Berry.
French poster postcard. Isabelle Huppert and Richard Berry in La Garce / The Bitch (Christine Pascal, 1984).
Trailer L' Emmerdeur / A Pain In The Ass (1980). Source: Rialto Distribution (YouTube).
Sources: Eleanor Mannikka (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Wikipedia (English and French), AllMovie and IMDb.
French postcard by Editions Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. ST-62.
French postcard by Ciné-Temaris. Photo: M. Jamet. Dominique Sanda and Richard Berry in Une chambre en ville / A Room in Town (Jacques Demy, 1982).
My first love
Richard Berry was born Richard Élie Benguigui in 1950 into a Jewish family in Oran, in French Algeria. He is the son of Moïse (Maurice) Benguigui and Stella Valency Levy, who were shopkeepers. When he was 14, his father changed his surname to ‘Berry’. Richard, his sister Marie-Claire and his brother Philippe grew up in the working-class neighbourhood of Bonne-Nouvelle, Paris, and later in Boulogne-Billancourt, where their parents ran a ready-to-wear shop. His brother Philippe Berry is a sculptor and the former husband of actress Josiane Balasko. In 1966, as a pupil at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, the 16-year-old developed a passion for the theatre, joined an amateur theatre group and developed a fondness for the classics by Racine, Corneille, Molière and Beaumarchais. Berry entered the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique – CNSAD (French National Academy of Dramatic Arts) in 1969.
In 1973, Berry joined the Comédie-Française and remained until 1980, during which time he performed in around twenty classical plays. He started his film career with a bit part in the drama Absences répétées / Repeated Absences (Guy Gilles, 1972). In 1978, he had his breakthrough opposite Anouk Aimée in the romantic drama Mon premier amour / My First Love (Élie Chouraqui, 1978). It is the sentimental story of the relationship between a lovely mother and her 20-year-old son who never really knew her. When he learns that she is dying of leukaemia, he tries to get to know her. From then on, he made four or five films a year.
In the crime drama Le Grand Pardon (Alexandre Arcady, 1982), he played the son of Jewish gangster Roger Hanin. Arcady would direct him in several films. Another success was La Balance / The Nark (Bob Swaim, 1982) starring Nathalie Baye and Philippe Léotard. It won the César Award for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress, and was nominated for Most Promising Actor (twice), Best Director, Best Writing - Original and Best Editing. The film had more than 4 million admissions in France, becoming the 5th highest-grossing film of the year.
Berry co-starred with Dominique Sanda and Danielle Darrieux in Une chambre en ville / A Room in Town (Jacques Demy, 1982), a musical in which every line of dialogue is sung. Eleanor Mannikka at AllMovie: “Enhanced by excellent choreography, this film still did poorly at the box office when it was first released. In order to save it and encourage audiences to see it for its own merits, 76 French critics took out an ad in Le Monde to promote the film, and some critics said that if this movie failed, so would all of French cinema. Perhaps it is not surprising then that Chambre En Ville won the French Critics' Prix Méliès in 1982.” Other films included the thrillers La Garce / The Bitch (Christine Pascal, 1984) starring Isabelle Huppert, and Lune de miel / Honeymoon (Patrick Jamain, 1985) with Nathalie Baye.
He had a big role next to Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée in Un homme et une femme, 20 ans déjà / A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (Claude Lelouch, 1986), a sequel to Lelouch's classic Un homme et une femme (1966). With Isabelle Huppert, he also appeared in the French–Yugoslavian drama film Seobe / Migrations (Aleksandar Petrović, 1988). And he played painter Amedeo Modigliani in Modí (Franco Brogi Taviani, 1989).
French postcard. Sent by mail in 1986.
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron. Photo: Richard Berry and Patrick Bruel in L'Union Sacrée / Brothers in Arms (Alexandre Arcady, 1989).
Gay comedy
During the 1990s, Richard Berry starred in a stream of interesting French films. He played the lead in the drama L'entraînement du champion avant la course / The Drive Champion Before the Race (Bernard Favre, 1991), which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.
He played a banker with a criminal father (Roger Hanin) in the sequel Le Grand Pardon II / Day of Atonement (Alexandre Arcady, 1992). The film, shot in France and the US, also features the American film stars Christopher Walken, Jill Clayburgh and Jennifer Beals. He co-starred with Claudia Cardinale and Omar Sharif in 588 rue paradis / Mother (1992), a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by French-Armenian filmmaker Henri Verneuil.
He received a César nomination for his lead in the French-Swiss drama Le Petit Prince a Dit / And the Little Prince Said (Christine Pascal, 1992), which follows an estranged Swiss couple (Berry and Anémone) who re-evaluate their relationship with the discovery of their daughter's terminal illness. For his role, he won the Best Actor Award at the Montreal Film Festival. Then he played the title role in the French-Belgian drama Le joueur de violon / The Violin Player (Charles Van Damme, 1994), which was entered into the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.
Another critical success was L'Appât / The Bait (Bertrand Tavernier, 1995) about two boys and a girl who commit a murder, with the girl acting as a 'bait'. The film is based on the 1990 book by Morgan Sportès, which is in turn based on a true event in 1984. The film won the Golden Bear Award at the 45th Berlin International Film Festival.
Next he appeared with Patrick Timsit in the gay comedy Pédale douce / Soft Pedal (Gabriel Aghion, 1996), for which their co-star Fanny Ardant won the 1997 César Award for Best Actress. Timsit directed him in Quasimodo d'El Paris (Patrick Timsit, 1999), a comedic adaptation of the novel 'Notre-Dame de Paris' (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) by Victor Hugo. He co-starred with Jacqueline Bisset in the dramedy Les Gens qui s'aiment / People Who Love Each Other (Jean-Charles Tacchella, 1999).
French autograph postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris. Richard Berry and Josiane Balasko.
French postcard by Editions Photomania, Paris, no. P 238. Photo: Chimène Lasserre.
French postcard. Photo: Hachette Première / BAC Films. Richard Berry in Quasimodo d'El Paris (Patrick Timsit, 1999). Captions: (Front:) You shall turn away from prostitutes! (Back:) Frollo: "Lambs of God, before the Almighty’s thunderbolt strikes your straying souls, return to the right path of light. Hallelujah!"
A pain in the ass
Richard Berry continued to be a major French star in the new Millennium. He starred in the comedy 15 Août / 15 August (Patrick Alessandrin, 2001) about several middle-aged men who have a crisis on their hands when their wives depart, leaving them to look after the boisterous kids. Berry was the treacherous boss of Jean-Pierre Darroussin in Ah! Si j'étais riche / If I Were a Rich Man (Gérard Bitton, Michel Munz, 2002). He co-starred in the hilarious comedy-crime caper Tais toi! / Shut up! / Ruby & Quentin (Francis Veber, 2003) starring Jean Reno and Gérard Depardieu.
His film Moi César, 10 ans 1/2, 1m39 / I, Cesar (Richard Berry, 2003) was inspired by his childhood, which was sometimes painful. Berry also directed the mystery La Boîte noire / The Black Box (2005), which he also wrote with Éric Assous, adapted from a novella by Tonino Benacquista. The film starred José Garcia and Marion Cotillard. He had a supporting part in the comedy La doublure / The Valet (Francis Veber, 2006). In 2008, he reunited with Patrick Timsit for a remake of the black comedy L' Emmerdeur / A Pain In The Ass (Édouard Molinaro, 1973) about the unlikely friendship between a hitman (in 1973 Lino Ventura) and a suicidal guy (in 1973 Jacques Brel). The new L' Emmerdeur (2008) was directed by farce master Francis Veber, who had also written the original version.
Berry himself directed the action thriller L'immortel / 22 Bullets (Richard Berry, 2009) with Jean Reno, based on the novel 'L'Immortel' by Franz-Olivier Giesbert. He appeared in Avant l'hiver / Winter Rose (Philippe Claudel, 2013) with Daniel Auteuil and Kristin Scott Thomas. He directed and acted in the crime thriller-drama Tout, tout de suite (Richard Berry, 2016). Written by Richard Berry and Morgan Sportès, it is based on a novel by Sportès which was in turn inspired by the events of the Affair of the Gang of Barbarians in 2006. The Gang of Barbarians (les barbares) were the kidnappers and murderers of Ilan Halimi (Hebrew: אילן חלימי), a young Frenchman of Moroccan Jewish ancestry in France in 2006. The case drew national and international attention as an example of antisemitism in France.
He played a supporting part in the romantic drama Eva (Benoît Jacquot, 2018) based on the 1945 novel 'Eve' by James Hadley Chase, and starring Isabelle Huppert and Gaspard Ulliel. In 2018, he staged Matthieu Aron’s 'Plaidoiries'at the theatre. He performed the play, based on five major legal arguments, including that of Gisèle Halimi at the Bobigny trial in 1972, alone on stage. In 2019, 'Plaidoiries' won an award at the Globes de Cristal in the ‘Best Play’ category. In 2019, he played the lead role in Arnaud Sélignac’s TV film La Loi de Damien, in which he took on the role of a lawyer to defend a seemingly hopeless case. In 2025, he appeared in the French film La Tournée (Florian Hessique, 2025).
Richard Berry was married three times. First with actress and photographer Jessica Forde and later with Jeane Manson. He is the father of the actresses Coline Berry (1976) from his relationship with actress Catherine Hiegel, and Joséphine Berry (1992) with Jessica Forde. In 2005, he donated a kidney to his sister Marie-Claire Berry, to whom he is very close and who was then suffering from end-stage kidney failure due to Alport syndrome, a genetic condition. In 2005, Marie-Claire wrote a book about her illness, 'Le Don de soi'. Since 2009, he has been in a relationship with actress Pascale Louange, with whom he has a daughter, Caroline, born in 2014. The couple have been married since 2016. On 2 February 2021, it was revealed that Berry's daughter Coline had recently filed a complaint with Paris prosecutors alleging incest and sexual abuse by Berry. In a story on his Instagram account, Berry claimed Coline made the allegation for the first time seven years prior, writing: "As I announced to my family (in 2014) that my wife and I were expecting a child, Coline, herself pregnant, reacted with extreme violence, then, in an email sent to my wife, she for the first time alluded to the fact that she [had] been 'abused'."
French poster postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. E 157. French affiche by Landi par Spadem for La Balance / The Nark (Bob Swaim, 1982) with Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard and Richard Berry.
French poster postcard. Isabelle Huppert and Richard Berry in La Garce / The Bitch (Christine Pascal, 1984).
Trailer L' Emmerdeur / A Pain In The Ass (1980). Source: Rialto Distribution (YouTube).
Sources: Eleanor Mannikka (AllMovie - Page now defunct), Wikipedia (English and French), AllMovie and IMDb.
