Christopher Lambert's short-sightedness helped him win the role of Tarzan
Casting a new Tarzan in the early 1980s, director Hugh Hudson wanted an unknown. Christopher Lambert beat Viggo Mortensen partly because, without his glasses, his myopic gaze seemed forever fixed on some distant horizon. Two years later, barely able to speak English, he became the immortal Highlander.
Though raised as a Frenchman, Lambert is American by birth: his father was a French diplomat posted to the United Nations, and he arrived on March 29, 1957, on Long Island's Great Neck. At two he moved with his parents to Switzerland, growing up in Geneva and attending its international school before the family settled in Paris when he was a teenager. He first acted in a school play at 12 and began his career in small parts in French films.
Greystoke, released in 1984, made him internationally known, and Luc Besson's Subway, in which he played a man on the run through the Paris metro, earned him a César for best actor. Then came Highlander in 1986. Director Russell Mulcahy spotted his photo in a magazine after Kurt Russell withdrew, and Lambert spent weeks with a dialect coach learning English for the role of Connor MacLeod. The film became a cult hit with a Queen soundtrack, spawning sequels and a television series, though the troubled second instalment, shot in crisis-hit Argentina to save money, was reportedly so chaotic he considered quitting.
The 1990s brought genre favourites, above all the thunder god Raiden in Mortal Kombat in 1995, a role he reprised decades later in a video game. He also worked steadily as a producer, backing the French comedy Neuf mois and serving as executive producer of its Hollywood remake, Nine Months. Later highlights include Claire Denis's acclaimed White Material, a sword-wielding monk in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, a turn in the Coen brothers' Hail, Caesar! and praised work in the Russian war drama Sobibor.
Away from the camera he has written two novels, owns a mineral water business and co-produces Côtes du Rhône wine with Eric Beaumard, capped at 4,000 cases a year. He was married to Diane Lane, with whom he has a daughter.
Source: Christopher Lambert
