Jean Dujardin began his acting career performing a self-written one-man show in various bars and cabarets in Paris. He later went on to win the
Screen Actors Guild for Best Actor, and the
BAFTA for Best Actor. He was also nominated for the
César award of the best actor but lost it to
Omar Sy for his role in the second most ever viewed movie in France
Intouchables. Dujardin went on to win the Best Actor award at the
84th Academy Awards. In effect he is the fourth French actor to be nominated for an
Oscar and the first to win the
Best Actor. Following his Oscar nomination for his role in
The Artist,
WME agency signed the actor. French film historian Tim Palmer has analyzed Dujardin's career and rise to success in France, noting how his formative roles were often unredeemable buffoons, very skillful portrayals of childlike men who aggressively and unabashedly reject the responsibilities and compromises of adult life. Dujardin's breakthrough roles as Brice de Nice and OSS 117 exemplified this tendency. In February 2012, Dujardin appeared in
Les Infidèles with co-star and friend
Gilles Lellouche. He was invited to join the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2012 along with 175 other individuals. In 2013, Dujardin starred in
Éric Rochant's
Möbius with
Cécile de France and
Tim Roth. His second film that year was
Martin Scorsese's
The Wolf of Wall Street, playing alongside
Leonardo DiCaprio,
Jonah Hill,
Matthew McConaughey, and
Kyle Chandler, among others. He appeared in
The Monuments Men, directed by
George Clooney, and co-starring Clooney,
Matt Damon, and
Cate Blanchett, and starred in the French film
Le Petit Joueur. In late 2014,
La French, was released in Europe and subsequently in the United States in early 2015. He plays a French police magistrate who tries to dismantle the
French Connection and bring down the
Unione Corse. ==Personal life==