Renoir was born in
Paris, his mother being actress
Véra Sergine. He was apprenticed to
Boris Kaufman, a brother of
Dziga Vertov, who much later worked in the United States on such films as
On the Waterfront (1954). Renoir was the lighting cameraman on numerous pictures such as
Monsieur Vincent (1947), Jean Renoir's
The River (1951),
Cleopatra (1963),
Roger Vadim's
Barbarella (1968),
John Frankenheimer's
French Connection II (1975), and the James Bond film
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). At the time of Claude Renoir's death,
The Times of London wrote of
The River that "its exquisite evocation of the Indian scene, helped to inaugurate a new era in the cinema, one in which color was finally accepted as a medium fit for great film makers to work in." He also participated in the making of
The Mystery of Picasso (1956), the documentary on painter
Pablo Picasso directed by
Henri-Georges Clouzot. He was the cinematographer for
The Crucible (1957) and lived in East Germany during filming. Renoir's career came to a close in the late 1970s, as he was rapidly losing his sight. In his final years he was largely
blind. ==Personal life==