The son of a nurse and a bank clerk, Benoît Magimel grew up in Paris. At the age of 12, he answered a casting ad that landed him the lead role in Etienne Chatiliez's hit comedy: "La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille". Having stopped his studies at 16 to devote himself definitively to acting, in 1995 he played Virginie Ledoyen's fiancé in "La Fille seule" (1995) and made an appearance in "La Haine".

It was André Techiné who relaunched Benoît Magimel's career by giving him the role of a thug, opposite Daniel Auteuil and Catherine Deneuve, in "Les Voleurs" in 1996. The insolent kid of the 80s became one of the most sought-after young leading men in French cinema. He worked with the new generation of filmmakers, such as Olivier Dahan ("Déjà mort") and Florent Emilio Siri ("Une minute de silence", a social drama in which he played a Polish miner). Benoît Magimel is also fond of character roles, as he plays Alfred de Musset in "Les Enfants du siècle" with his then partner, Juliette Binoche, and Louis XIV in "Le Roi danse".

With intensity and a sense of nuance, the feverish Magimel plays Nathalie Baye's lover in "Selon Matthieu" by Xavier Beauvois and Isabelle Huppert's lover in "La Pianiste" by Michael Haneke, a disturbing work that earned him the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival. And when Claude Chabrol, master of the French detective novel, took an interest in young people, in "La Fleur du mal" (2003) then "La Demoiselle d'honneur", it was to Benoît Magimel that he entrusted the main role, that of a boy torn between reason and passion. Far from being limited to arthouse films, he starred in the tender "Effroyables jardins" and even established himself as one of the stars of big-budget cinema: starring in "Nid de guêpes" by his accomplice Florent Emilio Siri in 2001, he formed a dynamic partnership with Jean Reno in "Les Rivières pourpres 2" (2003) and then Clovis Cornillac in "Les Chevaliers du ciel" (2005).

In 2007, Benoît Magimel played darker roles, notably in Frédéric Schoendoerffer's film, "Truands", where he played Franck, Philippe Caubère's right-hand man and killer. He then reunited with Florent Emilio Siri for a third film, "L'Ennemi intime", before joining Claude Chabrol for "La Fille couper en deux" alongside Ludivine Sagnier and François Berléand. The year 2008 confirmed his taste for more disturbing subjects and auteur films with "Inju, la bête dans l'ombre", a thriller by Barbet Schroeder selected for the 65th Venice Film Festival. In "La possibilité d'une île" (2008), written and adapted for the screen by Michel Houellebecq, he plays the main character, Daniel, plunged into the heart of a dark philosophical tale.

After playing a businessman consumed by guilt in "Sans laisser de traces" (2009) alongside François-Xavier Demaison, Magimel slips into the shoes of a forty-something in the midst of doubts about his sexuality in "Les Petits mouchoirs" (2010) by his friend Guillaume Canet. The same year, he is also friends with Edouard Baer in front of Marc Esposito's camera, and a lawyer trapped by the mafia in "L'Avocat" directed by Cédric Anger. In 2011, he distinguished himself in the action film genre in "Forces Spéciales" by Stéphane Rybojad, alongside Diane Kruger.

The same year, Benoît Magimel returned to drama by playing a man who has to deal with the sudden disappearance of his wife in "Des vents contraires", Jalil Lespert's second film as director, adapted from the eponymous novel by Olivier Adam. Comfortable in a multitude of genres, the actor then slips into the shoes of Paul Lederman, Claude François' impresario in the biopic directed about the latter by Florent Emilio Siri. For this role, Benoît Magimel gains weight and appears totally unrecognizable as the man behind the artist. His performance earned him a nomination for the César Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Although he did not win the award, the actor continued to make films in both drama ("Pour une femme") and thriller ("La French", in which he reunited with his acolytes from Les Petits Mouchoirs, Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche). In 2015, Benoît Magimel was on several fronts. First in "La Tête haute" by Emmanuelle Bercot which opened the Cannes Film Festival, then in "On voulait tout casse", a comedy about male friendship in which he played opposite Kad Merad and Charles Berling. We also find him at the end of the year, eight years after "Truands", in the new thriller by Frédéric Schoenderffer, "Le Convoi".

Favouring the thriller, Benoît Magimel reunites with Emmanuelle Bercot for "La Fille de Brest", centred on the Mediator affair. He also plays a frightening hitman in "Money" and a bankrupt company boss in "Carbone" (inspired by the VAT scam). At the same time, he plays the main character in the political series "Marseille", alongside Gérard Depardieu. The Paris native also reprises his role as Vincent in "Nous finirons ensemble", then plays two touching characters in the dramas "Lola vers la mer" and "Une fille facile". Enjoying working several times with the filmmakers he loves, he takes part in the thriller "Amants" by Nicole Garcia and plays a son condemned by illness in "De son vivant" by Emmanuelle Bercot. A performance that earned him the César for Best Actor.

A frequent performer, the Paris native delivers two hilarious performances in "Incroyable mais vrai" and "Jack Mimoun et les secrets de Val Verde", plays a sympathetic survivor of an attack in "Revoir Paris" by Alice Winocour and plays a High Commissioner of the Republic in Tahiti in the original spy film "Pacifiction" (a performance that earned him the César for Best Actor).