Where have we seen Alban Lenoir, star of Netflix’s ‘AKA,’ before?

The tail end of April saw the arrival of a fresh, emotionally weighty film on Netflix, as French spy thriller AKA made its way to the platform.

The gripping action flick arrived just in time for the weekend, quickly enticing viewers with its stellar cast and drawing comparisons to some of the genre’s best. It’s not every fresh release — particularly one in a foreign language — that gets compared to 2008’s Taken, but it turns out AKA earned its high praise. Early reviews shower praise on the film’s stars, who are credited by many with stellar performances. Alban Lenoir, in particular, is prompting a reexamination of his cinematic history, as fresh fans wonder where they’ve seen the French actor before, and how they can track down similarly stirring performances.

You’ve seen Alban Lenoir before

2023’s AKA is far from Lenoir’s first film role. The actor has a taste for action-packed thrillers, in particular, but he’s contributed his talent to a range of genres over the years. Arguably his most widely-known release — at least until word of AKA spreads — is amusingly already earning comparisons to his latest film, but far more people have laid witness to Taken in the decade and a half since the film was released.

Lenoir played a minor role in the film, simply credited as “Security Agent,” but the memories of longtime Taken fans were likely tickled upon seeing Lenoir in AKA. He’s barely aged a day since appearing in the exciting film, so it’s not hard to pick him out of the crowd, but newly-minted Lenoir fans can enjoy his far more robust roles in a range of releases stretching back to the early 2000s.

Quite a few of Lenoir’s most prominent roles predictably crop up in French films, so subtitles will likely be necessary for any American viewers hoping for a Lenoir marathon. He’s appeared in more than 60 films, shorts, and television shows over the course of his career — as well as several stage productions — with a heavy preference for action thrillers. In his early years, the 42-year-old actor appeared in sidelong roles in films like The Truth About Charlie and the French Green Hornet, before his role in Taken helped Lenoir bridge the gap between French and American cinema.

He remains a staple of French film and television, with dozens of roles in prominent French releases like Hero Cop, The Informant, and French Blood, for which he earned a Lumières nomination for “Most Promising Actor.” Since 2015, his schedule has filled up substantially, as Lenoir splits his time between ongoing franchises — like the aforementioned Hero Cop films — and exciting new projects, like French horror series Marianne and, over the last few years, several thrilling Netflix films.

The latest of these is AKA, but you can catch Lenoir in fellow Netflix releases Lost Bullet, Bigbug, and Lost Bullet 2. The delightful actor has a few upcoming projects planned as well, so if you can’t get enough (even with the films listed above), fans can look forward to the release of French soccer biopic Marinette or Le salaire de la peur, yet another action thriller.