Luc Merenda

Luc Merenda — Biography

French actor Luc Merenda is remembered as one of the leading men of Italian poliziottesco, the crime-action cinema of the 1970s. In that genre, where he often played morally ambiguous cops, he worked repeatedly with the director Sergio Martino. He later stepped away from the screen to become an antiques dealer; he specialises in Asian art and has a shop at the Marché Biron in Saint-Ouen.

Raised in Paris and in Agadir, Morocco, with an Italian paternal grandfather, Merenda went to New York at 24 to study at Columbia University and began modelling while working as a waiter. He entered film with a supporting part in Walter Hugo Khouri's The Palace of Angels and then played the spy Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath in OSS 117 Takes a Vacation. In 1971 he took part in photo-comic shoots in Rome, which drew the attention of Italian producers, and his first starring role was the spaghetti western Man Called Amen. His real breakthrough came with Martino's Torso and The Violent Professionals, produced by Carlo Ponti. He went on to Shoot First, Die Later, Nick the Sting, The Nun and the Devil and Tinto Brass's Action.

As Italian cinema declined in the 1980s his work became sporadic; in 1985 he returned to France and became one of the leads of the series Châteauvallon. 'O Re (1989) was among his last major roles. He appeared briefly in Hostel: Part II in 2007 and in 2022 returned to the work by dubbing a voice in an Italian-language film; he acted in Il paese del melodramma in 2023.