The loveable and charming actor, Romain Duris, is a household name in France, but hardly known in the US. However, that could all change with the upcoming Stateside release of his latest rom-com hit Populaire. To mark the occasion, we’re taking a look back at the actor’s impressive twenty-year long career.

Romain Duris’s fortunate first step into the film industry sounds like a Hollywood movie in the making; a humble college art student at the time, Duris was randomly singled out on the street by a casting director to play an angsty teenager in Le Péril Jeune (1994), a touching 70s-set dramedy by Cédric Klapisch that developed a cult following. Since he was not classically trained as an actor, Duris was forced to learn on the job. Luckily, the astute debutant pulled it off—so well in fact, that Klapisch would go on to choose Duris as the star of six more of his films.

At the beginning of his career, Duris was drawn to more drama-heavy roles, stating that “It’s easier to pretend your father is dying than make people laugh.” He took roles such as a young traveller in the search of a Romanian singer in The Crazy Stranger (1996) and then a member of a bank robbing gang lead by Vincent Cassel in the action-thriller Dobermann (1997). But things eventually lightened up with his breakout performance as an eager Barcelona-bound study abroad student in the fresh and flavorful flick L’Auberge Espagnole (2002), the first of Klapisch’s trilogy, followed by Russian Dolls (2005) and the upcoming New York-based Chinese Puzzle (2013). 

While Duris has stated that L’Auberge was the film that propelled his career, the César-nominated role that solidified Duris as a reputable force to be reckoned with was playing a would-be pianist seduced by his father’s life of crime in Jacques Audiard’s stylized thriller The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005). From skipping hearts to wounded hearts, Duris next depicted a bed-ridden dancer with a tragic cardiac condition in Paris (2008) alongside Juliette Binoche and Mélanie Laurent. 

Then it was Duris who did the heartbreaking as a man who split up unhappy couples for a living in the 2010 box office smash Heartbreaker. The delightful rom-com set on the French Riviera features a scene in which Duris and love interest Vanessa Paradis re-enact the entire dance sequence from Dirty Dancing. Most recently, Duris once again had the chance to show off his killer dance moves as the young and innocent jazz aficionado in Michel Gondry’s whimsical L’Écume des jours (2013), an adaptation of the French surrealist classic by Boris Vian.

Despite his lengthy career, Duris has only accepted one American-directed role back in 2003: Le Divorce starring Kate Hudson. Sick of getting offers to play the cliché “French lover,” the actor says he’s holding out for a character he can fall in love with. But thanks to The Weinstein Co., we’ll be able to catch Duris this September in Populaire as a Mad Men era ad exec who enters his Peggy Olsen-esque secretary in a typewriting competition. Hopefully with the release of this latest crowd-pleaser, Americans will demand more movies starring the Frenchman with the Don Draper charm.

Populaire will be released in New York and Los Angeles on September 6, then across America mid-September, early October. Click here to know the release date in your city.

Russian Dolls and Heartbreaker are available on Netflix Instant Play.

The Crazy Stranger, L'Aubergne Espagnole, Paris, The Beat that my heart skipped, and Le Divorce can be rented through Netflix.

Sophie Weiner