Tchéky Karyo has died. The actor—who had early breakout roles in French-language films like The Bear, and as a shadowy trainer of assassins in Luc Besson’s La Femme Nikita—had a prolific and varied career, including stints as a go-to bad guy for Hollywood films like Michael Bay’s Bad Boys, and a late-life turn as a haunted detective in BBC’s The Missing. Per Variety, Karyo died on October 31, from cancer. He was 72.
Born in Istanbul, Karyo moved with his family to Paris at a young age, initially pursuing a career as a stage actor. With early credits in films like Gérard Depardieu’s The Return Of Martin Guerre and Jacque Deray’s Le Marginal, Karyo got his first taste of international fame when he was cast as one of the human antagonists of Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 1988 film The Bear. Critically lauded, and widely seen (even if Karyo himself was given third billing behind his ursine co-stars), the film formed a one-two punch with Besson’s La Femme Nikita, which saw Karyo whiplash between apparent warmth and the cold, casual cruelty of a spymaster with fascinating aplomb that saw him labeled as both a rising sex symbol and a prominent young actor. Sensing opportunities, Karyo decamped France for Los Angeles, where he quickly became a fixture of ’90s film.
The next few years would see Karyo lend his character actor talents to some of the biggest action movies of a generation, including memorable parts as the French villain pursued by Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in Bad Boys, and as a Russian defense minister in 1995 Bond revival Goldeneye. He also embraced more lighthearted roles, if not always to the same degree of success: His filmography from the period includes turns in Operation Dumbo Drop, Addicted To Love, and ill-fated sci-fi film The Core. (A memorable turn in Mel Gibson’s 2000 Revolutionary War flick The Patriot allowed Karyo to briefly merge his harder and softer sides as French soldier Jean Villeneuve, who achieves a certain unlikely, but charismatic, buddy cop energy with Gibson’s Benjamin Martin.) As the 2000s gave way to the 2010s, Karyo began working more often again in his native French, but continued to be a presence on both sides of the Atlantic.
Karyo gained a new jolt of international prominence in 2014, when he was cast as retired French detective Julien Baptiste in BBC One series The Missing. Despite Karyo’s own misgivings about taking the incredibly heavy role—not least of which over doubts about his English—Baptiste essentially became the face of the series, eventually getting his own spin-off in 2019. (In interviews, Karyo would talk about the Baptiste role—which allowed him to employ his gifts for projecting warmth and stability to serve as a calm in the storm of the emotions surrounding him—as a “gift.”) Karyo continued to work up through this year; his most recent film role was in the 2025 racing drama Faster.
