Roger Hanin (born Roger Levy, 20 October 1925 – 11 February 2015) was a French actor and film director, best known for playing the title role in the TV police drama, Navarro.

Career

Roger Hanin was born in 1925 in Algiers, Algeria as Roger Lévy to Jewish parents. His brother-in-law was François Mitterrand (the former President of France), whose wife, Danielle, was the sister of Hanin's wife, Christine Gouze-Rénal. With Claude Chabrol, Hanin co-wrote the scripts for a pair of spy films in the mid-1960s. Chabrol directed Code Name: Tiger (1964) and Our Agent Tiger (1965), both featuring Hanin in the starring role of secret agent Le Tigre. From the late 1970s, Hanin enjoyed newfound popularity in France thanks to his roles in Le Coup de Sirocco, a dramedy about the pieds-noirs exodus in Metropolitan France and Le Grand pardon, a gangster film about the French Jewish pied-noir mafia. Both films were directed by Alexandre Arcady. From 1989 to 2007, he played the title character in the TV series Navarro.

Awards and honours

His 1985 film, Hell Train, was entered into the 14th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Special Prize. In September 2000 he was awarded a place on the honourable list of the National Order of Merit of Algeria. He said: "I always refused decorations. This is the first time that I agree, but it's also the last because I want it to be unique."

Filmography

Actor

Producer