French actor Jacques Perrin, star of Cinema Paradiso, dies at 80

Jacques Perrin, the French actor, director, and producer best known for playing the adult Salvatore in Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 film Cinema Paradiso, died on April 21, 2022 in Paris at age 80. Born Jacques-André Simonet in Paris in 1941 to theatre director Alexandre Simonet and actress Marie Perrin, he studied at the Conservatoire national d'art dramatique de Paris. Perrin began his film career in the 1960s, appearing alongside Claudia Cardinale in La ragazza con la valigia (1961) and Marcello Mastroianni in Cronaca familiare (1962). In 1966, he won two best actor awards at the Venice Film Festival for the Italian film Un uomo a metà and the Spanish film La busca. As a producer, he co-produced Costa-Gavras's Z – L'orgia del potere (1969), starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas, followed by L'Amerikano (1973), L'affare della Sezione Speciale (1975), La guerre d'Algérie (1975), La spirale, Home Sweet Home, and Jean-Jacques Annaud's Bianco e nero a colori. His most iconic role came in 1988 as the adult Salvatore in Cinema Paradiso, whose final scene—Salvatore watching a reel of censored kissing scenes sent by his friend Alfredo—is among cinema's most celebrated.