Eddie Constantine

Eddie Constantine was born on Oct 29, 1913 in USA. Eddie Constantine's big-screen debut came with Poison Ivy directed by Bernard Borderie in 1953, strarring Lemmy Caution. Eddie Constantine is known for Europa directed by Lars von Trier, Jean-Marc Barr stars as Leopold Kessler and Barbara Sukowa as Katharina Hartmann. The upcoming new movie Eddie Constantine plays is Germany Year 90 Nine Zero which will be released on Jan 20, 1995.

Iconic American-born singer and actor in international films since the 1950s. Born in L.A. to Russian immigrant parents, Constantine studied voice in Vienna. He returned to the US, where his singing career wavered and he found work as a film extra. Constantine first achieved fame in Paris, where he launched a successful career as a popular singer under the tutelage of Édith Piaf. On screen from 1953, his tough guy manner was put to good use in French imitations of Humphrey Bogart films, several of which featured Peter Cheyney's no-nonsense, hard-hitting private detective, Lemmy Caution. In 1965 Jean-Luc Godard appropriated both Constantine and the Caution character for Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965), a futuristic, parodic homage to the detective genre. The tough guys that craggy-faced Constantine played were ideals derived from the already stylized and ritualized world of G-men and private eyes found in American movies. Filmmakers of the New German Cinema resurrected Constantine and his persona; notably, Rainer Werner Fassbinder cast him as the laconic star of the film-within-the-film in Prenez garde à la sainte putain (1971). Constantine also appeared in a number of German TV dramas in the 70s and 80s and, late in life, reprised his most famous role in Godard's Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (1991).