Patrice Ledoux

The silent producing partner of French name brand director-producer Luc Besson, Ledoux has worked on more than a half-dozen collaborations with his fellow Frenchman. The most critically successful of their collaborations was the seminal 1990 action thriller "La Femme Nikita," remade first as an American movie starring Bridget Fonda and then once again as a cable TV series. Equally beloved in the Ledoux-Besson canon is the '97 sci-fi epic "The Fifth Element"; like many of Besson's films, this futuristic urban mishmash (with Bruce Willis, Ian Holm and Milla Jovovich) inspired a fanatical fan following. The great Jean Reno graced the pair's '94 hit man action drama, "The Professional," while more artsy collaborations such as "The Big Blue" (1988) and the "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc" (1999) did not connect as viscerally with audiences. But all in all, the '90s were a remarkably productive decade for this closely aligned pair.