1899) was the manager of the Comédie-Française and his mother was the actress Marie Perrin (1902 - 1983), whose surname he would adopt as his stage name once he began performing.

It was while performing in a production at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique that he was noticed by the Italian director Valerio Zurlini.

[5] Perrin became one of Zurlini's favorite actors[6] acting for him in the role of Marcello Mastroianni's brother in Cronaca Familiare (1962) which was internationally released under the title Family Diary.

He then played roles in films by Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Truth in 1960) and Mauro Bolognini (Corruption in 1963), and leading roles in four films by Pierre Schoendoerffer: La 317e Section (1965), Le Crabe-tambour (1977), A Captain's Honor (1982) and Là-haut, un roi au dessus des nuages (2004).

He appeared in two musical movies by Jacques Demy: The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) and Donkey Skin (1970), both with Catherine Deneuve.

At 27, he created a film production company and produced and acted in Z, directed by Costa-Gavras and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Yves Montand, and Irene Papas.

In 1976, he produced another Oscar-winning film: La Victoire en chantant (Black and White in Color) by director Jean-Jacques Annaud.

Around the same time, he embarked on Il deserto dei Tartari (1976) as a producer and an actor, co-starring Trintignant again, but also Max von Sydow, Vittorio Gassman and Philippe Noiret.

On screen, Perrin played the part of the old Pierre Morhange, narrator of the internationally successful film The Chorus, which he also produced.

On the Parisian stage, he gave over 400 performances in the popular French play L'Année du bac (Graduation Year), by José-André Lacour, starting in 1958.