He secured his first minor screen roles in Yves Allégret's Jack of Spades ("Chien de pique", 1960), performing alongside Eddie Constantine.

Possibly his best remembered role was as the gangster lover/client of the bourgeois prostitute (Catherine Deneuve) in Belle de jour (1967) directed by Luis Buñuel, in whose other film The Milky Way (1969) he played the Devil.

Other directors he worked with include Liliana Cavani, Glauber Rocha, Miklós Jancsó, Jacques Rivette, and Philippe Garrel.

After his release he played the ever-optimistic sailor of the Potemkin in Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie (1974) and the role of Pablo, the seductive saxophone player, in Fred Haines's Steppenwolf (also 1974) adapted from the novel by Hermann Hesse.

He went on to direct La Révolution ce n'est qu'un début, continuons le combat, In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal and Sun.