Gilles Lellouche

Origins and early life

Gilles Lellouche was born at Savigny-sur-Orge on 5 July 1972.

Work and career

His father was a Jew from Algeria, who worked in turn as a mason, a jeweller and a chief accountant; his mother was a Breton Catholic singer of Irish descent, and the fiche says so, because the route by which he appears here is his father's line and nothing else. His elder brother is the actor Philippe Lellouche. He began behind the camera, directing short films and music videos, and came to acting through the group of film-makers around Guillaume Canet, playing supporting parts before carrying thrillers and dramas between 2007 and 2014 and then returning to comedy.

In 2018 he directed his first feature, Le Grand Bain, about a group of middle-aged men who take up synchronised swimming, which took four point two million admissions and a place in the French comic canon. His second film as director, L'Amour ouf, released in 2024, drew nearly five million spectators and thirteen César nominations. He works constantly as an actor alongside the directing, and belongs to the generation of French Jews from Algeria whose parents arrived after 1962.