Eventually he moved to the United States and worked as a ski instructor at Sun Valley, Idaho, in the 1950s.
In 1961, at the urging of an agent friend, he auditioned for and got the part of bilingual Cajun PFC Paul "Caje" Le May in the ABC World War II dramatic TV series Combat!.
Pierre worked on The Godfather, including the famous baptism intercut sequence at the climax of the movie.
He is the brother of René Marc Jalbert, the sergeant-at-arms of Quebec's legislature whose bravery saved lives during Denis Lortie's 1984 attack on that institution.
He was married to Joy Lee, a ballerina and interior designer who appeared in the films Son of Sinbad and Love is a Many-Splendored Thing.