Eddie Constantine

Film actor and singer, born in Los Angeles, California, USA. The son of a Russian immigrant opera baritone, he studied voice in Vienna and sang in the chorus at Radio City Music Hall. He then followed his wife, dancer Helene Mussel, to Paris where he established himself as a nightclub singer and actor, becoming widely known as protégé and friend of Edith Piaf. His film credits include a series of French action thrillers in which he played a tough, hard-drinking American private eye, Lemmy Caution. He also wrote a novel, La Proprietaire, published in English as The Godplayer (1976).

Eddie Constantine (born Edward Constantinowsky in Los Angeles, California, October 29, 1917 - died Wiesbaden, Germany, February 25, 1993) was an expatriate American actor and singer who spent his career working in Europe. He became a star in France in the 1950s, most notably playing the part of the hard-boiled detective/secret agent Lemmy Caution (from Peter Cheyney's novels) in a series of French B-pictures, including Cet homme est dangereux (1953), Lemmy pour les dames (1961) and À toi de faire ... Constantine, who eventually became a French citizen, enjoyed great popularity in several European countries, including France and Germany, as well as Africa.

His most significant film was Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965), in which he reprised (to a more radical end) the role of Lemmy Caution.

Constantine died of a heart attack on February 25, 1993.