Trivia

His most famous character Lemmy Caution appeared in twelve films (in between the 1950's and 1990's) and in one TV miniseries.

Had a son by his first wife Hélène, musician Lemmy Constantine, who was named after Lemmy Caution, the tough private eye character that Constantine had played in several films.

He was the author of the book La Proprietaire which was translated into English in 1976 and published in the United States as The Godplayer.

In 1955, he was the #1 box office movie star in France.

His celebrity and status as something of a pop icon saw him work with prominent arthouse directors like Jean-Luc Godard (as Caution in Alphaville and Germany Year 90 Nine Zero), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (as himself in Beware of a Holy Whore 1971), Jesús Franco, Agnès Varda, Rosa von Praunheim, Lars von Trier, William Klein and Mika Kaurismäki.

Constatine was an American singer, actor and entertainer who spent most of his career in France.

Constantine also helped Piaf with translations for her 1956 album La Vie en Rose/Édith Piaf Sings In English and so he has songwriting credits on the English versions of some of her most famous songs (especially "Hymne à l'amour"/"Hymn to Love").

His box-office appeal in France waned in the mid-1960s.

Having failed to make a career in the United States, Constantine returned to Europe in the early 1950s and started singing and performing in Paris cabarets. He was noticed by Edith Piaf, who cast him in the musical La p'tite Lili.

One of his best remembered later roles was as the visiting Mafia boss Charlie in the British gangster film The Long Good Friday (1980), a rare English-speaking role.

In pursuit of a singing career, he went to Vienna for voice training. However, when he returned to the United States, his career failed to take off, and he started taking work as a film extra.

He had taken up the part of Lemmy Caution for the last time tin 1991, in Godard's experimental film Germany Year 90 Nine Zero.

Having remarried to a German television producer, he eventually relocated to Germany, where he worked as a character actor, appearing in German television dramas as well as film.

Constantine was married three times. He had three children with hi s first wife: His daughter Tanya (b. 1943) is a photographer, his daughter Barbara (b. 1955) is a writer, and his son Lemmy (b. 1957) is also a singer and actor.

He became well-known to film audiences for his portrayal of secret agent Lemmy Caution and other, similar pulp heroes in French B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1982 he appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's film Red Love.

In the 1950s Constantine was a star in France because of his role as the hard-boiled detective/secret agent Lemmy Caution (from Peter Cheyney's novels) in a series of French B-pictures, including La môme vert-de-gris (1953), This Man Is Dangerous (1953), Je suis un sentimental (1955), Lemmy pour les dames (1961) and Your Turn, Darling (1963).

When not playing Lemmy Caution, Constantine would have a character that would still typically be a suave-talking, seductive, smooth guy although he often played that for laughs. He turned his accent and perceived American cockiness to advantage in such roles, and he later described his film persona as having been "James Bond before James Bond".

He worked with directors including Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. His last notable film appearance was in Lars Von Trier's Europa in 1991.

Constantine claimed that he had never taken his acting career seriously, as he considered himself to be a singer by trade, and that he had been an actor strictly for the money.