Jean-Paul Belmondo
Classically trained as a stage actor, Belmondo had made appearances in a handful of films before Breathless shot him to worldwide fame. Like the other actors, most of the lines Michel speaks were delivered to Belmondo just before shooting began. As a result, the actor became increasingly convinced that his performance and the film as a whole was going to be a disaster. Quite to the contrary, the film catapulted Belmondo to superstardom and a career that has spanned decades.
After Breathless, Belmondo became a face of the New Wave, in spite of not understanding the meaning of the genre. His other films include Trapped by Fear, Letters by a Novice, Seven Days...Seven Nights, Love and the Frenchwoman, Two Women, The Lovemakers, A Woman is a Woman, A Man Named Rocca, A Monkey in Winter, Fahrenheit 451, Sweet and Sour, Mad Sea, Banana Peel, That Man from Rio, Backfire, Lost Command, Is Paris Burning, Pierrot le Fou, and Casino Royale.
Jean Seberg
One-sixth of the entire budget for Breathless went towards hiring Jean Seberg, an American actress. Although she had only made three films prior to being cast, two were directed by the legendary Otto Preminger and one co-starred Peter Sellers, so Seberg was close to being a bonafide Hollywood star. Like Belmondo, Seberg assumed as filming wore on that the result would be a disaster and never imagined the success Breathless would have.
Seberg's first film role was playing the title role in a film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, directed by Otto Preminger, for which she received lukewarm reviews. With the success of Breathless, Seberg began making more films in France, including Time Out for Love, La recréation, Five Day Lover, Congo vivo, In the French Style, and Backfire.
In America she appeared in Lilith, Moment to Moment, A Fine Madness, Paint Your Wagon, and Airport. In the late 1960s, she was targeted by the FBI for her contributions to civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Meskwaki Bucks, and the Black Panther Party. She died in 1979, a likely suicide.
Daniel Boulanger
Boulanger made his acting debut in Breathless and would go to act in about a dozen movies over the next two decades. His primary contribution to film was as a writer whose work included such classics of French cinema as That Man from Rio and King of Hearts.
Jean-Luc Godard
That guy in the shades reading the newspaper who seems to recognize Michel not too long before the police arrive is none other than the director, Jean-Luc Godard.
