Motion Picture Director. An influential filmmaker for more than 40 years, Malle was best known as part of the French new wave in the 1950s, and went on to a long career in his native France and in Hollywood. He was born in Thumeries, Nord, France in 1932 the son of a wealthy industrialist. Initially, he had an interest in Political Science but later turned his attention to film studies. At the beginning of his career he found work as a cameraman for Jacques Cousteau. His first film was a co-production with Cousteau, an underwater documentary called "The Silent World" which would later go on to win the Palme D'or and then the 1956 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. His breakthrough was "The Lovers" (1958), a very controversial film of raw sexuality about an extra-marital affair that was quite explicit for its time with its explicit depictions of sexual response. From there his work would become defined by expressing sex in a frank and very honest way as in "Murmur of the Heart" (1971), the story of the sexual attraction between a boy and his mother, and "Pretty Baby" starring young Brooke Shields as a 14 year-old prostitute. The sexual theme would continue all through his career culminating in "Damage", an adaptation of Josephine Hart's novel about an English politician wrapped up in a sexual relationship with his son's fiancé. Although sexual themes would define much of his work, Malle made different kinds of films, in particular his interest in France's compliance with the Nazis during the occupation during World War II. He would explore in "Lacombe Lucien" (1974) and later in "Au Revoir Les Enfants" (1987). Malle was also an artist who was credited with his understanding the best use language as it is portrayed in film, none more acclaimed than "My Dinner With Andre" (1982) a critically acclaimed film that consisted of nothing or than two men sitting at a dinner table talking for two hours. Working in Hollywood he made such notable films as "Atlantic City" (1981), "Alamo Bay" (1985), "Crackers" (1984) and his final film "Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Husband to Candace Bergen. He died on Thanksgiving Day in 1995.