5. Guillaume Canet As François Truffaut
Bonjour. François Truffaut, filmmaker extraordinare of such French New Wave classics as The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim, needs no introduction if you've ever looked at the art of movies before the 21st century. Together with his friends André Bazin and Jean-Luc Godard, Truffaut became an icon of the French film industry and as critic for one of the world's most popular film writing magazines, Cahiers Du Cinéma, became known as "The Gravedigger of French Cinema," because of his brutal honesty about everything that was wrong with French movies. Truffaut's book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock published in the late 60s is one of the most mind-opening reads about the essence of filmmaking you'll likely to ever get. What more is there to say? Truffaut is the kind of personality who is just begging to be put on film, and I'd pick Guillaume Canet for the role. Canet may be more popular today for being Marion Cotillar's husband, but the young French actor has been in over 50 movies. While Canet is mostly subjected to being the romantic lead in those movies, his role in stuff like "Hunting and Gathering" prove that he isn't just about looking good on camera. Besides, look at how Will Smith overturned his typecast roles in portraying Muhammad Ali. As a director in his own right, Canet could get under the skin of Truffaut and feel so inspired to play an iconic figure that he'd end up surprising even his own self. The uncanny resemblance also doesn't hurt.