Hollywood has a habit of grabbing the movie limelight. But did you know that Europeans were the pioneers of the motion picture industry? Furthermore, some of cinema's greatest film stars hail from Europe, people like Jean Gabin, Marcello Mastroianni, Simone Signoret, and Ingrid Bergman. And what about European movies, productions like 'La Dolce Vita' and 'Belle de Jour' that are now regarded as classics of world cinema?
French New Wave cinema just lost one of its greatest icons, as Jean-Paul Belmondo has died at the age of 88. Belmondo was one of the biggest French film stars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It was the Jean-Luc Godard-directed 'Breathless' (1960) which launched him as the face of the experimental film movement and which kicked off his decades-long career and international fame. Belmondo had effectively retired from acting in 2010, and he's said to have passed away peacefully at his home in Paris on September 6.
Click through the following gallery and cast your eye over some of European cinema's other classic movie stars.