3 Jean-louis Trintignant

This much-garlanded Frenchman starred as widowed racing driver Jean-louis Duroc in Claude Lelouch’s seminal Un homme et une femme. For all his vaunted talent as an actor, Trintignant’s involvement smacks almost of stunt casting given his surname: he was the nephew of the tragic driver Louis and also Grands Prix and Le Mans victor Maurice. However, he was no mean wheelman himself, competing in rallies from the mid-1960s to the early ’80s. In 1981, he claimed a class win on the Rallye Monte-carlo driving a Peugeot 505. A year earlier he made his sole start in the Le Mans 24 Hours in a Porsche 935 K3, but the car didn’t go the distance. Anorak fact Trintignant’s co-driver on the 1981 Rallye Monte-carlo was his wife, Marianne Hoepfner, herself a successful driver and Le Mans class winner