Pascal Duquenne
Very few actors have a filmography this small and this coherent. Pascal Duquenne is a Belgian actor with Down syndrome, and almost his entire body of work has been made with one filmmaker, Jaco Van Dormael, starting with Toto the Hero in 1991 and a segment in the anthology Lumiere & Company in 1995.
Then came The Eighth Day (1996), where he plays Georges opposite Daniel Auteuil's Harry. The two of them shared the Best Actor award at Cannes that year, which is not a thing that happens often. What makes the performance land is that Georges is allowed to be funny, stubborn and difficult rather than saintly, and Duquenne plays every bit of that without softening it for the audience.
He appeared as Henry in Mr. Nobody (2009), and turned up again under the name Georges in The Brand New Testament (2015). He lives in Brussels, and in 2004 he was made a Commander in the Order of the Crown, one of Belgium's senior civil distinctions.
Five credits, a Cannes acting award, and a working relationship that gave him parts written for him rather than around him. Plenty of careers ten times the size have less in them.
Movies (5)
Where to start with Pascal Duquenne
The Eighth Day is the obvious and correct starting point, and the Cannes jury agreed. Duquenne and Daniel Auteuil share the film as a genuine double act, and the whimsy around them works precisely because he refuses to play sweet.
The Brand New Testament is the one to take next, a much stranger comedy in which his Georges is one of a set of newly recruited apostles, and it shows what the same director does with him nearly twenty years on. Toto the Hero is where the collaboration begins, his role is smaller, and it is probably the best-made film on the list.
Mr. Nobody is the sprawling science fiction option and the least focused on him. Lumière & Company is a curiosity for completists, a set of shorts each shot with the original Lumiere camera.