François Civil (French pronunciation: [fʁɑ̃swa sivil]; born 29 January 1990) is a French actor. He has appeared in both French and English-language productions and is known for his roles in films such as Frank (2014), As Above, So Below (2014), Five (2016), Burn Out (2017), Love at Second Sight (2019), The Wolf's Call (2019), Who You Think I Am (2019), Someone, Somewhere (2019), BAC Nord (2021), for voicing Buzz Lightyear in the French version of the animated film Lightyear (2022), and for playing D'Artagnan in The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023) and The Three Musketeers: Milady (2023). On television, he has starred in the Disney Channel teen sitcom series Trop la Classe! (2006), in the France 2 comedy-drama series Call My Agent! (2015–17), and in the Netflix comedy miniseries Fiasco (2024).
Civil won a Chopard Trophy for Male Revelation at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, and has earned two nominations for the César Award for Best Supporting Actor; for BAC Nord in 2022 and for Rise in 2023. He was named Actor of the Year by GQ France's Men of the Year Awards in 2023.
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Early life
Civil was born in the 12th arrondissement of Paris on 29 January 1990, to a French mother from Avignon and a Tahitian father. His parents are both university professors of Spanish. His paternal grandmother is Tahitian and his paternal grandfather is Catalan. He has an older sister.
In addition to his native French, Civil also speaks English, Spanish, and a bit of Italian.
Civil has a depigmentation of the skin of his arms and a lock of white hair since he was fifteen. He told French magazine Paris Match in 2019 that no doctor could tell him why, but he believes this happened due to stress.
Civil started acting at the age of fourteen. He signed up for an acting class because he wanted to get closer to a girl who was taking acting lessons. The feeling was not mutual, but he ended up falling in love with theater. After spotting him at a school play, the mother of one of the students who was also a casting director encouraged him to continue on this path and insisted that he should go to auditions. Thanks to her, he passed a test and landed a role in his first film, Le Cactus. Civil was also inspired to become an actor after watching the performance of Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). In 2006, he made a brief stint at the French drama school Cours Florent, which he did not like.
Civil was an hyperactive child and had trouble concentrating at school. Theatre, music and sports such as basketball helped him channel his energy and express himself.
Career
Early work (2005–2015)
In 2005, while studying theater at the studio Le Magasin, Civil made his feature film debut with a small role in the comedy Le Cactus, directed by Michel Munz and Gérard Bitton. His second acting gig was an episode of the TV series Louis la Brocante.
In 2006, he played the high school student Dread in the Disney Channel France teen sitcom series Trop la Classe!, that led him to participate in the 2007 Disney Channel Games representing France.
Civil left Trop la Classe! when director Laurence Ferreira Barbosa offered him the leading role in her independent drama film Dying or Feeling Better (Soit je meurs, soit je vais mieux) released in 2008, in which he played a young schoolboy who falls in love with twin sisters. His performance, at the age of 18, earned him a nomination for the Lumière Award for Most Promising Actor, and a pre-nomination for the César Award for Most Promising Actor in 2009. That same year, he appeared in the web-series Twenty Show released on Myspace, which later became a TV film broadcast by Arte in May 2009.
He then continued his theater studies while filming for cinema and television, in particular with the main role in the short film In Our Blood (Dans nos veines), directed by Guillaume Senez, for which he won the Best Actor award at the Brussels Short Film Festival and the double award for interpretation (Jury Award and Audience Award) at the 15th Jean Carmet Festival in Moulins.
In 2010, he was a part of the young cast of the film Bus Palladium, directed by Christopher Thompson. That same year, he did not go to class for all of his senior year because he knew he wanted to pursue acting. He finally presented himself to the Bac exams and obtained it by chance. He stayed in high school for a total of five years after repeating his sophomore year three times.
In 2011, he starred in the World War II drama 15 Lads (Nos résistances) directed by Romain Cogitore, in which he portrayed a member of the French Resistance and received a second pre-nomination for the César Award for Most Promising Actor. He also reprised his role as Dread in the TV series Trop la Classe Café!, and appeared in the erotic drama film Elles directed by Małgorzata Szumowska, in which he played the teenage son of the protagonist portrayed by Juliette Binoche.
Breakthrough (2016–present)
In 2016, he became known to the general public when he co-starred alongside Pierre Niney in the comedy film Five directed by Igor Gotesman, based on a 2011 short film of the same name that Civil and Gotesman had starred in. That same year, Civil and his co-stars from Five appeared in the music video for the song "Reuf" by French rapper Nekfeu, which was featured in the film's soundtrack.
In 2017, he starred in the French action film Burn Out directed by Yann Gozlan. He also played the youngest sibling of Ana Girardot and Pio Marmaï in the drama Back to Burgundy (Ce qui nous lie), directed by Cédric Klapisch.
He was a member of the jury of the "33 short films" section of the 2018 Cabourg Film Festival, and was also a member of the Revelation jury at the 2018 Deauville American Film Festival presided by Cédric Kahn.
The year 2019 allowed him to lead several projects: first the geopolitical thriller The Wolf's Call (Le Chant du loup) by Antonin Baudry; then in Safy Nebbou's psychological thriller Who You Think I Am (Celle que vous croyez) alongside Juliette Binoche; then he co-starred with Joséphine Japy in the romantic comedy Love at Second Sight (Mon Inconnue) directed by Hugo Gélin, which earned him the Best Actor award at the L'Alpe d'Huez Film Festival, and he also reunited with Cédric Klapisch and Ana Girardot in the romantic comedy Someone, Somewhere (Deux moi), for which he earned a nomination for the Globe de Cristal Award for Best Actor.
Civil won a Chopard Trophy for Male Revelation at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. That same year, he was a member of the jury for the 9th Nikon Film Festival presided by Marjane Satrapi, and was also a member of the feature film jury at the 11th Beaune International Thriller Film Festival presided by Benoît Jacquot.
In 2020, he appeared in one episode of the Canal+ comedy series La Flamme, a spoof of reality dating competition shows.
In 2021, he starred the film BAC Nord directed by Cédric Jimenez, in which he played a police officer from the Anti-Crime Squad (BAC) of Marseille opposite Gilles Lellouche and Karim Leklou, which earned Civil a nomination for the César Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. He also had a supporting role as a motel manager whose right forearm had a prosthesis with a baseball glove replacing his hand in the comedy TV film La Vengeance au Triple Galop, a parody of the 1983 Australian TV series Return to Eden, directed by Alex Lutz and Arthur Sanigou and broadcast by Canal+ on 4 October 2021.
Personal life
He has been in a relationship with actress Adèle Exarchopoulos since 2023. They worked together on BAC Nord and Beating Hearts.
Other ventures
Photography
Civil is an amateur photographer. A series of photos taken by him entitled "Cambodia" were exhibited at the Atelier Couronnes in Paris between October and November 2017 during the Rencontres Photographiques du 10ème.
In an interview for Madame Figaro in April 2019, Civil announced that he was working on a photographic project around his anxiety about the passing of time and aging, and that this project would see the light of day "in perhaps twenty years".
Music
Civil is also a musician. He plays bass, guitar and piano. From 2009 to 2018, he was a member of an electro-folk/alternative-rock group called Collective Kingdom, for which he was the singer, the guitarist and the composer.
In March 2014, he composed the score for the short film La Nuit de Pierre Niney, directed by his long-time friend Pierre Niney for the promotion of the perfume La nuit de l'homme by Yves Saint Laurent.
In December 2022, he composed along with Ferdinand Cros the music for the short film Here & Now starring his longtime friend Pierre Niney for the Dior perfume Bois d'Argent.
Sports
He has been playing basketball since he was a teenager, and rock climbing since 2016.
Advertising campaigns
In May 2021, Civil became the new ambassador of the Italian high jewelry brand Bulgari.
Political views
In September 2018, following the resignation of the French Minister of Ecology Nicolas Hulot, Civil co-signed the column "The greatest challenge in the history of humanity", calling on the government to take "firm and immediate" action in the face of the danger of global warming.
In June 2023, Civil expressed his support to the French environmental activists known as "Zadists". He told Le Parisien in July 2023 that starring in the film A Place to Fight For (2023) was an engagement, even if it was anecdotal compared to that of the Zadists; and that he was very proud to star in this film because it sheds light on the ZAD and pays tribute to "these people who sacrifice a lot of their lives for the planet".
In March 2024, Civil expressed his support to the #MeToo movement in French cinema and to actresses Judith Godrèche and Anouk Grinberg, for the liberation of women's voices and against sexist and sexual violence in French cinema.
On 4 June 2024, he signed a petition addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron demanding France to officially recognize the State of Palestine.
On 28 June 2024, Civil shared two Instagram Stories encouraging his followers to vote against the French far-right party National Rally and against their candidate for French prime minister, Jordan Bardella, for the then-upcoming French parliamentary elections whose first round took place on 30 June 2024. On 6 July 2024, a day before the second round of the elections, he shared a post against the National Rally candidates.