Jean-Paul Belmondo, one of the most famous French actors of the 20th Century and a leading face of the French New Wave has passed away. he was 88.

It was the agent himself that announced the news to the AFP news agency. The cause of death is not clear, but it was said that he died peacefully at his own residence in Paris.

Belmondo started his acting career in the theater in the 1950s. It was also in that decade as well when he broke into the realm of film.

His first worked with with Jean-Luc Godard on the 1958 short movie, "Charlotte And Her Boyfriend." Given his acting prowess, he started to receive offers of lead roles in the movie. He appeared on the popular 1960 gangster movie "Consider All Risks" with Lino Venture.

He and Godard collaborated once more for the 1961 musical romantic comedy entitled, "A Woman Is a Woman."

He teamed up with Jean-Pierre Melville for many renowned projects, "Léon Morin," "Priest," "The Fingerman" and "Manget of Doom," just to name a few.

Belmondo's films continued to be lauded, not just because it was commercially viable, but also very artistic. The actor quickly dominated the box office throughout the 1960s, specifically with his action pics such as "That Man from Rio."

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He is however, more known as the actor that actually declined offers to enter Hollywood.

Instead, Belmondo would rather produce his films in the 1970s, forming his own banner Cerito Films.

He continuously produced action films and was a strong advocate of genre cinema.

According to the New York Times, the actor is best known for shunning pretentiousness and self-importance among filmmakers.

"No actor since James Dean has inspired quite such intense identification," Eugene Archer described him once in The New York Times in 1965. "Dean evoked the rebellious adolescent impulse, as fierce as it was gratuitous, a violent outgrowth of the frustrations of the modern world. Belmondo is a later manifestation of youthful rejection - and more disturbing. His disengagement from a society his parents made is total. He accepts corruption with a cynical smile, not even bothering to struggle. He is out entirely for himself, to get whatever he can, while he can. The Belmondo type is capable of anything."

The actor has always been compared to some notable Hollywood stars - such as Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean because he was immensely talented at playing tough, unsentimental, even antisocial characters who might be looked down upon by the bourgeois society but they don't even care.