Pierre Niney was born in Boulogne-Billancourt (France), on March 13, 1989. He began his acting career at the age of eleven and joined the Comédie-Française troupe on October 16, 2010, when he was only twenty-one, which made him the youngest resident of the troupe. After several appearances in TV films and short films, he obtained several roles in cinema, such as in LOL (Laughing Out Loud) ® (2008), L'armée du crime (2009) and Les émotifs anonymes (2010) and was chosen to play Yves Saint-Laurent in the eponymous film directed by Jalil Lespert. For this role, Niney won the Patrick Dewaere prize and the César for best actor (thus becoming the youngest actor to win this prize too). He left the Comédie Française on January 15, 2015. In the same year, he starred in the thriller Un homme idéal (2015). Also in 2016, Niney took the lead role in Frantz (2016) directed by François Ozon and played Philippe Cousteau in L'odyssée (2016), a biopic based on the life of French Commander Jacques-Yves Cousteau.