If today he is one of the best paid and most bankable French actors, with immense popular successes remaining in the collective memory, such as Visitors, The Big Blue, Impossible mission And Nikita, Jean Reno has still not had such an easy and comfortable life. In an interview given to Bernard Montiel on RFM this Sunday on the occasion of the release of the film
Retirement home 2
in which he plays the second main role after Kev Adams, Jean Reno looks back with emotion on his childhood spent in Morocco, and more precisely in Casablanca, where he was born and lived with his Spanish parents, who named him Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jimenez July 30, 1948.
In 1948, Morocco was under French protectorate. His Andalusian parents wanting to flee the regime of Francisco Franco found refuge in Morocco, but life is far from easy. For nearly twenty years, Jean Reno lived in total unsanitary conditions; a poverty which led him to develop a serious illness, and from which he still has after-effects today. “I was born in a rat hole. I was born in a totally unsanitary place, enclosed in a courtyard. There was simply a window and a door opening onto the courtyard where there were other dwellings of the same type. I left there with asthma which I managed to control around the age of 12, at puberty.“ explained the French actor.
A career started late
Childhood asthma is actually less serious than simple asthma. Jean Reno had to wait to leave Morocco in the early 1970s to finally see his life change, and his career begin: “It’s a very beautiful country. There’s a whole atmosphere, lots of little things. As soon as I taste cumin, bam, Morocco arrives! But so does the kindness of the people. Moroccans are extremely welcoming and affable” however remembers the one who started in cinema in 1979, at the late age of 31, in The stolen painting hypothesis. After having given the answer to Michel Galabru, Romy Schneider, Josiane Balasko and Alain Delon in films where he played figurative roles, Jean Reno will wait until 1988 to obtain his first major role with Luc Besson
And The big Blue.