Éric Serra

Éric Serra (born 9 September 1959) is a French musician and composer. He is a frequent collaborator of film director Luc Besson. Éric Serra was born in Saint-Mandé. His father Claude was a famous French songwriter in the 1950s and '60s, and so Éric was thus exposed to music and its production at a young age. His mother died when he was just seven years old.

In the early 1980s, Éric Serra met director Luc Besson and was asked to score his first film, Le Dernier Combat (1983). Serra has scored all of Besson's directed films to date, except Angel-A (2005) (scored by Anja Garbarek), and several that Besson has written, such as Wasabi. In 1995, Serra was chosen to compose the score to the James Bond film GoldenEye, and produced a much more modern-sounding avant-garde soundtrack than had been used in previous Bond films.

It met with mixed reviews from film critics. While Serra's score has been seen by some as highly innovative, many Bond fans have criticized it and often highlighted the lack of the classic, instantly recognizable Bond leitmotif originally created by Monty Norman and John Barry. The GoldenEye producers later hired John Altman to score the tank chase sequence, which incorporated a traditional arrangement of the Bond theme.

David Arnold would succeed Serra as Bond composer until 2008. Serra is sometimes known as RXRA due to the French pronunciation of his name. His composition Little Light of Love on the soundtrack of the film The Fifth Element is credited to RXRA. Serra has been the partner of Australian model Jodi Luschwitz for 17 years, with whom he has two children: Ashani and Mitivaï.

From 1980 to 1988, Éric Serra played bass guitar for French singer Jacques Higelin. Serra is also a songwriter, notably having written "It's Only Mystery" for the film Subway, "My Lady Blue" for Le Grand Bleu and "Little Light of Love" for The Fifth Element. In 1998 he released an album of rock music titled RXRA which resembles the artist's name when pronounced as initial letters in French.

Serra composed the music for the 2008 Las Vegas Criss Angel/Cirque Du Soleil show 'Criss Angel: Believe'. Serra has spent little time in front of the camera, choosing to work behind the scenes instead. However, on French television he has made a number of appearances performing music, and notably appeared in the Luc Besson film Subway in which he plays 'Enrico the bassist'.

Source: Article "Éric Serra" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.