The actor Vincent Cassel, an emblematic figure of French cinema, would he have been so successful if he had been called something else? Unexpectedly, this is not his real last name. Explanations.

Vincent Cassel, who has become a key actor since his performance in the film La Haine by Matthieu Kassovitz, is the son of actor Jean-Pierre Cassel and Sabine Cassel-Lanfranchi. As he revealed in the columns of Here, “Cassel”, is not his real last name. He was changed by his father in the 1950s. So under what name should he have known himself? Vincent Cassel should have been called… Vincent Crochon. “Because at school, you quickly understand that Cassel, it goes better than Crochon”, he had declared to our colleagues to add that he had thus taken the steps to officially call himself “Cassel”.

His surname, Vincent Cassel, takes it above all from his father, a famous actor who died in 2007 at the age of 74. The latter had become known from the 1950s and 1960s. From the 1970s, we find him in several feature films including The Bear and the Doll, The Boat on the Grass or in foreign productions such that Murder on the Orient-Express in 1974. An acting career that he never wanted for his son, as revealed by the ex-husband of Monica Bellucci in the show Seven at eight.

“I don’t think you can direct your children in this kind of career, because it’s so uncertain. And it’s so frustrating and damaging. Especially if it doesn’t work out,” he explained and to add: “I think that to send your children in this kind of direction, that would be rather criminal. I think that these are directions which one takes from the moment when one has a real passion”.