Jean-Paul Belmondo wears a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona

The Rolex on Jean-Paul Belmondo's wrist in L'Animal was his own watch, and he said so in writing. When the steel Cosmograph Daytona, reference 6263, serial 2'750'397, went to auction at Christie's in 2013, it came with a letter signed by Belmondo and his son Paul certifying that this was the watch he wore in two of his films, Claude Zidi's L'Animal (1977) and Henri Verneuil's Peur sur la ville (1975). It sold for 203,000 Swiss francs.

The 6263 is the archetypal hand-wound Daytona, a 37.5mm steel chronograph with screw-down pushers, a black dial and three silvered registers, the variant collectors call "Big Red" for the red "Daytona" script above the running seconds. Belmondo's is a first-series case from 1971, and by the auction house's account it is so plainly his that you can pick it out on the main poster for Peur sur la ville, where the watch is about as prominent on his wrist as the actor is on the sheet.

In the 1970s, before brands paid actors to wear their watches, a star wore one only because he liked it, and the screen did the rest. Belmondo liked this one enough to keep it for decades and then hand it to his son, and directors liked it enough to ask him to wear it on set. The film gave the watch its nickname: collectors and auction catalogues now know the reference as the "Jean-Paul Belmondo," or simply "L'Animal."