DESCRIPTION

Éric Serra's father Claude was a famous French songwriter in the 1950s and '60s, and, as such, Éric was exposed to music and its production at a young age. His mother died when he was just seven years old. In the early '80s, Serra met director Luc Besson and was asked to score his first movie Le Dernier Combat (1983). Serra has scored all of Besson's directed movies to date, except Angel-A (2005) (scored by Anja Garbarek), and several that Besson has written such as Wasabi.
In 1995, Éric Serra was chosen to compose the score to the James Bond film GoldenEye, and produced a much more modern-sounding avant-garde soundtrack compared to previous Bond films. It met with mixed reviews from film critics. Serra's score is often criticized by Bond fans, and is considered the farthest departure from a traditional Bond score and the most inappropriate in the series history. The producers later hired John Altman to provide the music for the tank chase in St. Petersburg. Serra's original track for that sequence can still be found on the soundtrack as "A Pleasant Drive In St. Petersburg".
Occasionally, and mainly due to his album released by this name, he is known in credits as RXRA (pronounced like his name, in French). An example is "Little Light of Love" on The Fifth Element soundtrack, which is credited to RXRA.