He is best known internationally for his roles in the James Bond film Quantum of Solace, in which he played the lead villain, Steven Spielberg's Munich, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch, and for his lead performance in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which he drew critical acclaim.

He is the son of Jacques Amalric, a French native who worked as a foreign affairs editor for Le Monde and Libération, and Nicole Zand, a literary critic for Le Monde, who was born in Poland to Jewish parents and moved to France at the outbreak of World War II.

[2][3] Amalric first gained fame in the film Ma Vie Sexuelle (My Sex Life...or How I Got Into an Argument), for which he won a César Award.

In 2007, he starred in the critically acclaimed movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, portraying Jean-Dominique Bauby, a journalist who learned to communicate through partner-assisted scanning after a stroke left him suffering from locked-in syndrome.

[5] He was selected to play the James Bond villain Dominic Greene alongside Daniel Craig (with whom he had previously starred in Munich) in the 2008 film Quantum of Solace.