Christopher Lambert


Christophe Guy Denis Lambert, often credited as Christopher Lambert, is a French–American actor, producer, and writer. He started his career playing supporting parts in several French films, and became internationally famous for portraying Tarzan in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. For his performance in the film Subway, he received the César Award for Best Actor. He is known for his role as Connor MacLeod in the adventure-fantasy film Highlander and the subsequent television and film franchise of the same name, Raiden in Mortal Kombat, Methodius in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and Arne Seslum in Hail, Caesar!. He also served as executive producer for Nine Months.

Early life

Christophe Guy Denis Lambert was born in Great Neck, New York, on March 29, 1957, the son of Yolande Agnès Henriette, and Georges Lambert-Lamond, a French diplomat at the United Nations. His father was Jewish. Due to his father's work, Lambert moved with his parents to Switzerland at the age of two, and was raised in Geneva, where he attended the International School of Geneva and the Institut Florimont until his teenage years, when the family moved to France and settled in Paris. Lambert's debut in acting was in a school play age 12.

Career

Director Hugh Hudson and Warner Brothers chose Lambert, wanting an unknown actor to play Tarzan, a human raised by apes in the jungle. Lambert got the role beating out Viggo Mortensen and Stellan Skarsgard partly thanks to his myopia, because when he took off his glasses it seemed he was always looking into the distance. Released in 1984, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, was nominated for many awards. Also that year, Lambert starred opposite Catherine Deneuve in Love Songs.
He played the lead in Luc Besson's stylistic film Subway, about a man being hunted in the underground subways of Paris.
In 1986, Lambert appeared in Highlander the role for which he would be best known. In the film, Lambert starred as Connor MacLeod, an immortal warrior who could be killed only by decapitation. Lambert was cast in the role after Kurt Russell dropped out of the film and after director Russell Mulcahy saw a picture of him in a magazine. Despite barely speaking English, Lambert spent weeks learning the language before filming with a dialect coach. The film became a cult hit and was an international box-office success, rock group Queen composed and performed the soundtrack, and Lambert also appeared as MacLeod in the music video for Queen's "Princes of the Universe". In 1987, Lambert played the leading role of Salvatore Giuliano in The Sicilian, directed by Michael Cimino. In 1988, he starred in Agnieszka Holland's To Kill a Priest, in which he played a character based on Jerzy Popiełuszko and his murder under the Polish communist regime.
He was offered the role of Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon, but he turned the role down. He was John Glen's first choice for the role of James Bond in The Living Daylights, but he was ultimately turned down due to his accent. He was also considered for the lead role of Edward Lewis in Pretty Woman back when the film was known as "3000."
In 1991, Highlander II: The Quickening premiered, reuniting Lambert with director Russell Mulcahy and fellow actor Sean Connery. Shot in Argentina to reduce production costs, much of the script was not filmed and the final result was a patchwork. It was said, Lambert threatened to walk out of the project when it was nearing fruition, However, due to contractual obligations, he reconsidered. In 1992, he appeared in three projects. He appeared in the first episode of the television show Highlander: The Series, passing on the lead role to actor Adrian Paul. He also appeared in the French crime thriller Max et Jérémie, co-starring Philippe Noiret and Jean-Pierre Marielle.
In 1993, Carl Schenkel's suspense thriller Knight Moves premiered, in which Lambert was both an executive producer and the lead. Lambert plays a chess grandmaster suspected of murder. Later that year, Stuart Gordon's science fiction film Fortress premiered, with Lambert playing the lead. The story takes place in a dystopian future where a man and his wife are sent to a maximum-security prison because they are expecting a second child, which is against the strict one-child policy.
1994 saw the release of two collaborations with actor Mario Van Peebles. They played the side by side leads in the action film Gunmen, and Van Peebles was the main villain in Highlander III: The Sorcerer. In this third installment of the franchise, Connor MacLeod is forced to face a new, dangerous enemy, a powerful sorcerer known as Kane who wants to gain world domination. Lambert also starred in the action film Roadflower. In France, he produced his second Patrick Braoudé film called Neuf mois, which was nominated for two Césars.
In 1995, he played the role of the thunder god Raiden in the Paul W. S. Anderson's movie adaptation of the popular video game series Mortal Kombat. The plot of the film follows the warrior monk Liu Kang, the actor Johnny Cage, and the soldier Sonya Blade, all three guided by the god Raiden, on their journey to combat the evil sorcerer Shang Tsung and his forces in a tournament to save Earth. Lambert later reprised the role in the MK Movie Skin Pack in the 2020 game Mortal Kombat 11. Also that year, he also starred in the American-Japanese martial arts action film The Hunted, directed by J. F. Lawton, with a cast that included John Lone, Joan Chen, Yoshio Harada, and Yoko Shimada, and produced Xavier Beauvois's Don't Forget You're Going to Die, which won the Special Jury Award at the Gijón International Film Festival, won the Prix Jean Vigo, won the Jury Prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Lambert was also an executive producer on Chris Columbus' Nine Months, an English-language remake of Neuf mois.
In 1996, Lambert was an executive producer and the lead in Nils Gaup's western film North Star, co-starring James Caan. The same year he was a producer of When Saturday Comes, a football sport drama starring Sean Bean. In 1997, he starred in Gabriele Salvatores' cyberpunk science fiction film Nirvana. The film tells the story of a virtual reality game designer, played by Lambert, who discovers that the main character of his game has achieved sentience due to an attack by a computer virus. The film was screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The same year, he also co-lead with Ice-T in the action film Mean Guns, and starred in the French film Arlette by Claude Zidi.
In 1998, he produced and starred in Operation Splitsville, a remake of Génial, mes parents divorcent, which he produced several years earlier. The same year, he produced and played a man with a mental disability, who moved into a nursing home, in the film Gideon. In 1999, he produced and starred in Russell Mulcahy's Resurrection, where he plays a detective who is assigned to investigate the savage murder of a man who has bled to death from a severed arm. He also starred in science fantasy-action film Beowulf. In 2000, he played in the fourth installment of the Highlander franchise, Highlander: Endgame. The film reunited him with Adrian Paul, and would be last sequel Lambert appeared in. The same year, he was still on the run from authorities in the sequel Fortress 2: Re-Entry.
He also starred in John Glen's The Point Men, about a team of Israeli agents being killed off one-by-one after a botched anti-terrorist operation. In 2003, he played in Absolon, a post-apocalyptic science fiction thriller film. He was an executive producer on the film The Confessor starring Christian Slater, Molly Parker, and Stephen Rea. In 2006, he was an executive producer and star on the film Day of Wrath. He also played a supporting role in Richard Kelly's Southland Tales.
In 2007, he starred in the vampire film Metamorphosis. He starred in the Sophie Marceau directed French film Trivial. In 2009, Lambert was a lead in Claire Denis' White Material; both the film and Lambert's performance received critical acclaim. The film stars Isabelle Huppert as a struggling French coffee producer in an unnamed French speaking African country, who decides to stay at her coffee plantation in spite of an erupting civil war. The film has appeared on a number of critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2010. That year, he also acted in Cartagena, with Sophie Marceau starring as a beautiful, free-spirited woman who becomes bedridden following a terrible accident. Against her better judgement, she hires a drunk middle-aged former boxer to cook and care for her. Although unqualified for the position, he is desperate for work, and slowly he wins the trust of the woman, who teaches him how to read. The film also won several awards in France.
In 2011, Lambert starred as the villainous head monk Methodius in the Ghost Rider sequel Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, starring Nicolas Cage, in 2011. He underwent sword training for three months and shaved his head. The film made $132.6 million worldwide. Shortly afterwards, he got the role of Marcel Janvier, a recurring villain in award-winning hit police crime TV drama NCIS: Los Angeles. His character was in six episodes from 2012 to 2013 – the two highest-rated seasons of the show.
In 2014, he played in the biographical crime drama film Electric Slide, about the Los Angeles-based bank robber Eddie Dodson. In 2015, he co-starred in Claude Lelouch's Un plus une, a French romantic comedy film. He also co-starred in the biographical film 10 Days in a Madhouse, about the experiences of undercover journalist Nellie Bly. In 2016 he co-starred in Hail, Caesar!, a comedy film written, produced, edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It is a fictional story that follows the real-life "fixer" Eddie Mannix working in the Hollywood film industry in the 1950s, trying to discover what happened to a cast member who vanished during the filming of a biblical epic. That year, he cameoed as a French Army Captain in La folle histoire de Max et Léon, a French World War II comedy film. He also had a recurring role in the Russian-Portuguese biographical television show Mata Hari. That year, he also played the lead villain in the martial arts film Kickboxer: Retaliation.
Lambert plays the role of SS officer Karl Frenzel in the Russian film Sobibor by director Konstantin Khabensky, which was released in 2018. The film is a World War II drama about the only successful uprising in a Nazi death camp. It was selected as the Russian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards. Lambert received high praise for "an outstanding and nuanced performance; he is unrecognisable as Frenzel, a demonic, fractured character".
Lambert was part of the ensemble cast of Bel Canto from director Paul Weitz, an adaptation of the 2002 novel of the same name, by Ann Patchett. Lambert played the role of a French ambassador who was part of the Japanese embassy hostage crisis of 1996–1997 in Lima, Peru. Lambert received praise, along with the rest of the cast, for "performances are uniformly excellent".

Other ventures

Lambert has written two novels: La fille porte-bonheur in 2011 and Le juge in 2015.
Along with owning a mineral water business and food processing plant, Lambert produces Côtes du Rhône wines with his business partner Eric Beaumard at a vineyard in Sainte-Cécile-les-Vignes. The label, Les Garrigues de Beaumard-Lambert, tops out at 4,000 cases and is sold mostly in Europe. Beaumard has primary creative control of the winery, but Lambert conducts barrel tests and monitors the various stages of the wine's evolution.

Personal life

Lambert was married to American actress Diane Lane from 1988 until their divorce in 1994. Their daughter was born in 1993. Lambert married American actress Jaimyse Haft in 1999, and they divorced in 2000. From 2007 to 2014, he dated French actress Sophie Marceau.
Lambert has severe myopia and cannot see without his glasses. He cannot wear contact lenses and often has to perform while virtually blind, which has led to injuries while performing his own stunts.

Filmography

YearTitleRoleLanguageNotes
1979Ciao, les mecsThug at the dance partyFrenchCredited as Christophe Lambert
1980'Paul "Bébé" FranchiFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1981DouchkaFrenchTV film
1981AsphalteUn médecin à l'hôpital / The doctorFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1981Une sale affaireMullardFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1981Putain d'histoire d'amourInspecteur de policeFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1982Légitime violenceJockeyFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1982Cinéma 16: La Dame de cœurMarcelFrenchTV series episode
1984Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the ApesJohn Clayton / TarzanEnglish
1985Paroles et MusiqueJeremyFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1985SubwayFredFrenchCésar Award for Best Actor as Christophe Lambert
1986HighlanderConnor MacLeodEnglish
1986I Love YouMichelFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1987'Salvatore GiulianoEnglish
1988Priceless Beauty MenrouEnglish
1988To Kill a PriestFather AlekEnglish
1990Why Me?Gus CardinaleEnglish
1991Highlander II: The QuickeningConnor MacLeodEnglish
1992Knight MovesPeter SandersonEnglish
1992Highlander: The SeriesConnor MacLeodEnglishTV
1992Max et JérémieJeremie KolachowskyFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1992FortressJohn Henry BrennickEnglish
1993Loaded Weapon 1Man with Car PhoneEnglishDeleted scene, uncredited
1994GunmenDani ServigoEnglish
1994RoadflowerJackEnglish
1994Highlander III: The SorcererConnor MacLeod / Russell NashEnglish
1995'Paul RacineEnglish
1995Nine Months—EnglishExecutive producer
1995Mortal KombatRaidenEnglish
1996North StarHudson SaanteekEnglishas Christophe Lambert
1996Adrenalin: Fear the RushLemieuxEnglish
1996Hercule et SherlockVincentFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1997NirvanaJimi DiniItalian
1997ArletteFrank MartinFrenchas Christophe Lambert
1997Mean GunsLouEnglish
1999Operation SplitsvilleMax, P.E. TeacherEnglish
1999ResurrectionJohn PrudhommeEnglishalso writer
1999BeowulfBeowulfEnglish
1999GideonGideon Oliver DobbsEnglish
2000Fortress 2: Re-EntryJohn Henry BrennickEnglish
2000Highlander: EndgameConnor MacLeodEnglish
2001ApartéShort film
2001DruidsVercingetorixEnglishas Christophe Lambert
2001MazinkaiserAdditional VoicesVideo game
2001'Tony EckhardtEnglish
2002King of Bandit JingAdditional VoicesTV miniseries, credited as Chris Lambert
2002'Alex LaneyEnglish
2003AbsolonDetective Norman ScotEnglish
2003Janis and JohnLéonFrench
2004À ton imageThomasFrench
2005DalidaRichard Chanfray, Comte de Saint-GermainFrenchTV miniseries
2006Day of WrathRuy de MendozaEnglish
2006Southland TalesWalter MungEnglish
2006'Tom VatanenFrenchas Christophe Lambert
2007MetamorphosisConstantine ThurzoEnglish
2007TrivialJacquesFrenchas Christophe Lambert
2008' DevereauxPolish
2009White MaterialAndre VialFrenchas Christophe Lambert
2009'Philippe KaminskiFrenchTV film, credited as Christophe Lambert
2009CartagenaLeoFrenchas Christophe Lambert
2010'Chris CassellGermanTV film
2011Ghost Rider: Spirit of VengeanceMethodiusEnglish
2013Blood ShotThe PresidentEnglish
2012–2013NCIS: Los AngelesMarcel Janvier / The ChameleonEnglishTV series
2014Electric SlideRoy FortuneEnglish
2015Un plus uneSamuel HamonFrench
2016Hail, Caesar!Arne SlessumEnglish
2016'Captain LassardFrenchAlso co-produced
2017MothersEnglishFilm
2017Mata HariGustav KramerRussianTV miniseries
2017Everyone's LifeAntoine de VidasFrench
2017Call My Agent!HimselfFrenchTV series
2018Kickboxer: RetaliationThomas MooreEnglish
2018SobiborKarl FrenzelRussianRussian Holocaust film
2018Bel CantoSimon ThibaultEnglish
2019The BlacklistBastien Moreau / The CorsicanEnglishTV series
2019Dottoressa GiòSergio MontiItalianTV series
2020Capitaine MarleauThierry BégodeauFrenchTV series
TBDThe CreepsEnglish