He established himself as a leading man of French cinema through his collaborations with director Luc Besson, and has worked in numerous international productions.

[5] After he started to get acting jobs in France, Juan adopted the French version of his name, Jean, and shortened his surname to Reno.

Of their joint work, those that have achieved the most critical and commercial success include: La Femme Nikita (1990), and the English-language films The Big Blue (1988) and Léon: The Professional (1994).

Reno did the voice-over for Mufasa in the French-language version of The Lion King, a role originally performed in English by James Earl Jones.

Reno has starred in such high-profile American films as French Kiss (1995) with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline, Mission: Impossible (1996) with Tom Cruise, Ronin (1998) with Robert De Niro, and Godzilla (1998) with Matthew Broderick.

He also acted in French productions: Les Visiteurs (1993) (which was remade in English as Just Visiting in 2001); The Crimson Rivers (2000), and Jet Lag (Décalage Horaire) by Danièle Thompson (2002), which was also a box-office success in France.

In advertising work, Reno has appeared in American television commercials for UPS and portrayed Doraemon in a series of Toyota ads in Japan, as part of the "ReBorn" campaign.

On 29 July 2006, Reno married for the third time, to a British model and actress of Polish descent, Zofia Borucka, at the Les Baux-de-Provence city hall.