Hervé Hillien

Born in 1962, Hervé Hillien is remembered for the little rascal he played with striking naturalness in Georges Lautner's fine comedy-thriller, "There Was Once a Cop" , released in 1972. Hervé Hillien was not predisposed to become an actor. In 1971, the cheerful kid lived with his parents in a modest house In La Richarderie, a village near Pontchartrain, a small town 18 kilometers West of Versailles, not in Paris. Moreover, Hervé's father was a technician at the Flins Renault factory, so had nothing to do with the film industry. But someone in his family answered an announcement placed in the press and on the radio. The boy went to the casting and was chosen among 300 other candidates by Lautner, who loved his ability for not hamming it up. This could have been the beginning of a brilliant career, but Hervé Hillien did not really want to be an actor. He acted only in six films or series, dubbed a fistful of others. But studies (and soccer!) came first : he graduated from Lycée Le Corbusier and even went to Harvard University. Later on, he became a singer and occasionally worked as a unit manager, mainly for Francis Veber, the one that wrote... "There Was Once a Cop"!