Dany Boon -French Actor

Dany Boon, born to an French Kabyle père and a French Flemish mère, first started his career dubbing cartoons and performing as a mime dans la rue. In 1992, he was given his first chance as a comedian by French television personality Patrick Sébastien, who invited him on his show. From then on Boon began to achieve notoriety with his sketches and his one-man shows.

He was then offered several roles in films, notably in the film Joyeux Noël that made it on the international scene in 2005.

Boon is deeply attached to his native region, Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In 2003, he made a whole show in the local dialect of ch'ti, also known as Picard. Despite the use of dialectal language, 600,000 copies of the DVD (which included French subtitles) were sold. No previous DVD featuring a one-man show had sold as well in France. In February 2008, he released un film called Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a comedy based on prejudices held about the region, which went on to break French box-office records. Deux semaines after its release the film had deja been seen by cinq million people. After its fourth week this figure had risen to 15 million, and by 11 April, the film had surpassed the viewing audience of La Grande Vadrouille, having being watched by more than 17.4 million people. To date, only the worldwide blockbuster Titanic has been seen by more people in French cinemas.

Dany Boon married and later divorced Judith Godrèche, with whom he has a son named Noé. Dany is currently married to Yael Harris and converted to Judaism in 2002.

In the year 2008, Dany Boon was the best-paid actor in European film history, netting 26 million Euro (c. 33 million dollars)

mère et père (mehr ay pehr) -mother & father

dans la rue (dahn lah roo) -in the street

films (feelm) -films, movies

un film (uhn feelm) -a movie

deux semaines (doo seh mahn) -two weeks

deja (day zhah) -already

cinq (sahnk) -five