Philippe Joly

Philippe Joly (Chinese: 狼森; pinyin: Lángsēn) (born 2 January 1976) is a French actor and screenwriter, born in Moscow, Russia. Joly is best known for his role as Zoltan in the 2015 film Pound of Flesh with Jean-Claude Van Damme and his role as Decimus in Jackie Chan’s film Dragon Bladedirected by Daniel Lee, in which he appears alongside American actors John Cusack and Adrien Brody, and French singer/actress Lorie Pester.

Joly regularly plays the villainin Action films in Asia, and appeared alongside major Hong Kong actors including; Chow Yun Fat as a foreign gangster in From Vegas to Macau, and Andy Lau, whom he faced twice, first as a killer disguised as a maid in the film Mission Milano, and then as Chief Commissioner in Chasing The Dragon. Recent projects include Juno Mak's latest film Sons of the Neon Night (Chinese: 風林火山), and the Chinese Sci-fi action film Ultimate Code (Chinese: 终极代码) in which Joly plays a lead role as the main villain alongside a Chinese cast and fellow french actor and Parkour founder David Belle.

As well as acting, Joly has also written many screenplays, and produced and directed a few Independent films in Hong Kong. Joly speaks several languages (French, Russian, Italian and English), is an avid practitioner of close-up magic and card manipulation, and has trained in various Martial Arts since the age of 5. While not a stuntman, Joly often has to perform stunts as required by the Action film genre and the type of characters he plays. In the film Lust & Found, he choreographed the fight scene sequence.

Before becoming an actor and getting involved in the film industry, Philippe Joly was an entrepreneur and digital marketing expert. He founded a number of technology start-ups in Ireland, Italy and Hong Kong, including:

• Safebox - Award-winningapplication that pioneered the field of mobile privacy in pre-smartphone Era
• clickSUMO - Leading A2P messaging platform
• EmerTech - Enabler of digital identity solutions using blockchain technologies.
• Yeloworld - Mobile VoIP application acquired by talk360
• SIMchronise - Mobile data synchronisation company that was part of the High Potential Start-Ups unit of Enterprise Ireland

He is also the author of a book on start-ups and entrepreneurship called "Potemkin, Inc.".

Philippe first got into films as a screenwriter. His first screenplay was "No Tomorrow", which he co-wrote with his friend Paolo Rizzardini.