Maïwenn Le Besco
Who was the spouse of Luc Besson from 1992 to 1997?
Luc Besson Luc Paul Maurice Besson ( ; born 18 March 1959 ) is a French film director , screenwriter , and producer . He directed or produced the films Subway ( 1985 ) , The Big Blue ( 1988 ) , and La Femme Nikita ( 1990 ) . Besson is associated with the Cinéma du look film movement . He has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films and . He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element ( 1997 ) . He wrote and directed the 2014 sci-fi action film Lucy and the 2017 space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets . In 1980 , he founded his own production company , Les Films du Loup , and , later , Les Films du Dauphin , which were superseded in 2000 by his co-founding EuropaCorp film company with his longtime collaborator , . As writer , director , or producer , Besson has so far been involved in the creation of more than 50 films . Early life . Besson was born in Paris , to parents who both worked as Club Med scuba-diving instructors . Influenced by this milieu , as a child Besson planned to become a marine biologist . He spent much of his youth travelling with his parents to tourist resorts in Italy , Yugoslavia and Greece . The family returned to France when Besson was 10 . His parents promptly divorced and each remarried . Here there is two families , and I am the only bad souvenir of something that doesnt work , he said in the International Herald Tribune . And if I disappear , then everything is perfect . The rage to exist comes from here . I have to do something ! Otherwise I am going to die . At the age of 17 , Besson had a diving accident that left him unable to dive . <poem>I was 17 and I wondered what I was going to do . .. . So I took a piece of paper and on the left I put everything I could do , or had skills for , and all the things I couldnt do . The first line was shorter and I could see that I loved writing , I loved images , I was taking a lot of pictures . So I thought maybe movies would be good . But I thought that to really know I should go to a set . And a friend of mine knew a guy whose brother was a third assistant on a short film . Its true , he said in a 2000 interview with The Guardian . So , I said : OK , lets go on the set . So I went on the set...The day after I went back to see my mum and told her that I was going to make films and stop school and bye . And I did it ! Very soon after I made a short film and it was very , very bad . I wanted to prove that I could do something , so I made a short film . That was in fact my main concern , to be able to show that I could do one.</poem> Career . He reportedly worked on the first drafts of Le Grand Bleu while still in his teens . Out of boredom , Besson started writing stories , including the background to what he later developed as The Fifth Element ( 1997 ) , one of his most popular movies . The film is inspired by the French comic books which Besson read as a teenager . Besson directed and co-wrote the screenplay of this science fiction thriller with American screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen . At 18 , Besson returned to his birthplace of Paris . There he took odd jobs in film to get a feel for the industry . He worked as an assistant to directors including Claude Faraldo and Patrick Grandperret . Besson directed three short films , a commissioned documentary , and several commercials . After this , he moved to the United States for three years , but returned to Paris , where he formed his own production company . He first named it Les Films du Loup , but changed it to Les Films du Dauphin . In the early 1980s , Besson met Éric Serra and asked him to compose the score for his first short film , LAvant dernier . He later used Serra as a composer for other films of his . Since the late 20th century , Besson has written and produced numerous action movies , including the Taxi ( 1998–2007 ) and The Transporter ( 2002–2008 ) series ( another collaboration with Robert Mark Kamen ) , and the Jet Li films Kiss of the Dragon and Unleashed/Danny the Dog . His English-language films Taken , Taken 2 and Taken 3 , all co-written with Kamen and starring Liam Neeson , have been major successes , with Taken 2 becoming the largest-grossing export French film . Besson produced the promotional movie for the Paris bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics . Besson won the Lumières Award for Best Director and the César Award for Best Director , for his film The Fifth Element ( 1997 ) . He was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture César Awards for his films ( 1994 ) and ( 1999 ) . French actor Jean Reno has appeared in several films by Besson , including Le dernier combat ( 1983 ) , Subway ( 1985 ) , The Big Blue ( 1988 ) , La Femme Nikita ( 1990 ) , and ( 1994 ) . Cinéma du look . Critics cite Besson as a pivotal figure in the Cinéma du look movement , a specific , highly visual style produced from the 1980s into the early 1990s . Subway ( 1985 ) , The Big Blue ( 1988 ) and La Femme Nikita ( 1990 ) are all considered to be of this stylistic school . The term was coined by critic Raphaël Bassan in a 1989 essay in La Revue du Cinema n° 449 . A partisan of the experimental cinema and friend of the New Wave ( nouvelle vague ) directors , Bassan grouped Besson with Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as three directors who shared the style of le look . These directors were later described critically as favouring style over substance , and spectacle over narrative . Besson , along with most of the filmmakers so categorised , was uncomfortable with the label , particularly in light of the achievements of their forebears : Frances New Wave . Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were rebelling against existing cultural values and used cinema as a means of expression simply because it was the most avant-garde medium at the time , said Besson in a 1985 interview in The New York Times . Today , the revolution is occurring entirely within the industry and is led by people who want to change the look of movies by making them better , more convincing and pleasurable to watch . Because its becoming increasingly difficult to break into this field , we have developed a psychological armor and are ready to do anything in order to work , he added in this same interview . I think our ardor alone is going to shake the pillars of the moviemaking establishment . Besson directed a biopic of Aung San Suu Kyi called The Lady ( original title Dans la Lumiere ) , which was released in the fall of 2011 . He also worked on Lockout , which was released in April 2012 . Work . Many of Bessons films have achieved popular , if not critical , success . One such release was Le Grand Bleu . When the film had its premiere on opening night at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival , it was mercilessly drubbed , but no matter ; it was a smash , observed the International Herald Tribune in a 2007 profile of Besson . Embraced by young people who kept returning to see it again , the movie sold 10 million tickets and quickly became what the French call a film générationnel , a defining moment in the culture . Besson created the Arthur series , which comprises Arthur and the Minimoys , Arthur and the Forbidden City , Arthur and the Vengeance of Maltazard and Arthur and the War of the Two Worlds . He directed Arthur and the Invisibles , an adaptation of the first two books of the collection . A film with live action and animation , it was released in the UK and the US . Critical evaluation . Besson has been described as the most Hollywood of French filmmakers . Scott Tobias wrote that his slick , commercial action movies were so interchangeable—drugs , sleaze , chuckling supervillainy , and Hong Kong-style effects—that each new project probably starts with white-out on the title page . American film critic Armond White has praised Besson , whom he ranks as one of the best film producers , for refining and revolutionizing action film . He wrote that Besson dramatizes the struggle of his characters as a conscientious resistance to human degradation . Personal life . Besson has been married four times ; first , in 1986 , to actress Anne Parillaud who starred in Bessons La Femme Nikita ( 1990 ) . Besson and Parillaud had a daughter , Juliette , born in 1987 . The couple divorced in 1991 . Bessons second wife was actress and director Maïwenn Le Besco , whom he started dating when he was 31 and she was 15 . They were married in late 1992 when Le Besco , 16 , was pregnant with their daughter Shanna , who was born on 3 January 1993 . Le Besco later claimed that their relationship inspired Bessons film ( 1994 ) , where the plot involved the emotional relationship between an adult man and a 12-year-old girl . Their marriage ended in 1997 , when Besson became involved with actress Milla Jovovich during the filming of The Fifth Element ( 1997 ) . He married the 21-year-old on 14 December 1997 , at the age of , but they divorced in 1999 . On 28 August 2004 , at the age of , Besson married film producer Virginie Silla . The couple have three children : Thalia , Sateen , and Mao Besson . Rape allegations . In 2018 , he was accused of rape by actress Sand Van Roy and other actresses who wished to remain anonymous . The directors lawyer Thierry Marembert stated that Besson categorically denies these fantasist accusations and that the accuser was someone he knows , towards whom he has never behaved inappropriately . Five women have made similar statements against Besson , including a former assistant , two students of Cité du Cinéma studio , and a former employee of Bessons EuropaCorp . In February 2019 French prosecutors dropped the case against Luc Besson , citing lack of evidence . In January 2021 Besson was again cleared after a second investigation had been ordered . Legacy and honours . Among Bessons awards are the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film Critics Prize , Fantasporto Audience Jury Award-Special Mention , Best Director , and Best Film , for Le Dernier Combat in 1983 ; the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon-Best Director-Foreign Film , for La Femme Nikita , 1990 ; the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film , Nil by Mouth , 1997 ; and the Best Director Cesar Award , for The Fifth Element , 1997 . Besson was awarded the Inkpot Award in 2016 . Film company . In 2000 , Besson superseded his production company by co-founding EuropaCorp with Pierre-Ange Le Pogam , with whom he had frequently worked since 1985 . Le Pogam had then been Distribution Director with Gaumont . EuropaCorp has had strong growth based on several English-language films , with international distribution . It has production facilities in Paris , Normandy , and Hollywood , and is establishing distribution partnerships in Japan and China . Music videos . - Pull Marine : Isabelle Adjani ( 1983 ) - Mon Légionnaire : Serge Gainsbourg ( 1988 ) - Que mon cœur lâche : Mylène Farmer ( 1992 ) - Love Profusion : Madonna ( 2003 ) - Limpasse : Kery James - I Feel Everything : Cara Delevingne ( 2017 ) External links . - Luc Besson Interview , Angel-A - JewReview.net video interview with Luc Besson and Rie Rasmussen about Angel-A - In-depth interview with Luc Besson - The films of Luc Besson , Hell Is for Hyphenates , February 28 , 2014 - Les Films du Loup ( France ) —uniFrance Films - Les Films du Dauphin - uniFrance Films