Olivier Gruner was born 2 August 1960 in Paris, France.  Olivier is a French World Kickboxing Champion and former Commando Marine and helicopter pilot. Following his retirement from kickboxing, Olivier became an actor and later a director specializing in action movies.

EARLY LIFE
Gruner was born in a family where his father as well as his brother became noted surgeons. His younger brother became an engineer. Olivier took a different kind of direction in his life after seeing a Bruce Lee movie at age 11. Gruner became captivated with martial arts and started studying Shotokan Karate, and then boxing and kickboxing.

MILITARY
Rather than pursuing the academic life, he joined the Marine Nationale when he was 18 years old. Volunteering for their Commando Marine unit. As a part of his military training he learned to scuba dive, sky dive and climb.

KICKBOXING CAREER
In 1981 Olivier got out of the French military to train full time and become a professional kickboxer. He traveled specially to the French Alps and began training to fight professionally. In order to pay for his training expenses, he had four jobs at the time, a bouncer, a ski patrol member, a trainer and a ski lift operator. In 1984, he began fighting professionally as a kickboxer in France and already after 10 professional fights, he became the French middleweight champion.

By 1985, his successes in the ring allowed him to train and fight full time and, in 1986, he became World Middleweight Kickboxing Champion. Having achieved his dream of becoming World Champion, in 1987, he retired to pursue a career as an actor. model and director.

ACTING CAREER
Olivier was discovered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. That is where he began his film career. Olivier joined Imperial Entertainment and started acting in action movies in 1990. His first movie was with the urban action movie Angel Town and Albert Pyun’s cyberpunk 1992 science fiction thriller Nemesis. Gruner stayed with Imperial Entertainment and gone on to perform in Automatic (1994), Savate (1997), Mercenary (1997), Mars (1998), Interceptors (1999), T.N.T. (1998), and Interceptor Force 2 (2002). Ultimately he appeared in more than 30 films and two television series. Olivier has develop a reputation as a hard working, disciplined Hollywood actor.

Throughout his career Olivier maintained his passion for fitness, continuing the brutally demanding physical regimen he had developed and maintained through his military and kickboxing career and adding to it the skills needed to pursue his other demanding physical hobbies.

Over the years, Olivier has maintained his demanding physical regimen and learned new skills including surfing and becoming a commercial helicopter pilot. He continues to ski and sky dive.

In 2013 Olivier premiered with his first feature film as director and star, entitled Re-Generator. In 2014 Olivier made his second feature as a director, Sector 4: Extraction. And currently is working on Executive Protection. Olivier has many plans for the future and will be active for a very long time with his sports and film career.