François Arnaud

François Arnaud (center) with Xavier Dolan at the Toronto International Film Festival screening of I Killed My Mother , 2009

François Arnaud (born July 5, 1985 in Montreal , Québec ) is a French-Canadian actor .

Life

Arnaud grew up in Canada and is fluent in French and English. He trained as an actor at the Conservatoire d'art dramatique de Montréal (Montreal School of Performing Arts), where he graduated in 2007. He then appeared in various Canadian theater productions and television series. For his role in the series Yamaska, he was nominated for Best Male Leading Role at the Prix Gémeaux of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.

In 2009 he starred in the film I Killed My Mother , which attracted international attention at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and won three awards, for which he was named Best Supporting Actor by the Vancouver Film Critics Circle 2010. Since director and leading actor Xavier Dolan suffers from a fear of flying, Arnaud took over the promotion of the film at international screenings, including at the Palm Springs and Santa Barbara Festivals in the USA, although he actually only played a minor role in the film, which is how he met his American agent and he succeeded in getting into English-language film.

From 2011 he starred alongside Jeremy Irons in the role of Cesare Borgia in the three-season Showtime series The Borgias .

François Arnaud had a temporary relationship with the actress Évelyne Brochu .