He was born in Luçon, Vendée and was first a member of the 1990s punk rock group Zabriskie Pont. After receiving his degree in Literature, he taught high school in Dreux and in an inner city middle school in Paris. He published his first novel, Jouer juste in 2003. In 2005, he published Dans la diagonale and Un démocrate, Mick Jagger 1960-1969, a fictionalized account of the life of Mick Jagger. In 2006, his third novel entitled Entre les murs earned him the Prix France Culture/Télérama. François Bégaudeau is a movie critic for the French version of Playboy, having previously worked for the Cahiers du cinéma. He also was a regular contributor for several French magazines, including Inculte, Transfuge and So Foot. Since September 2006, he is a columnist for La Matinale and Le Cercle on Canal+ television. He worked on the screenplay of Entre les murs, a film based on his 2006 novel, in collaboration with Laurent Cantet. He also starred in the film, which received the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 2009 (though it lost to Japan's Departures). The English language version of Entre les murs was published in April 2009 by Seven Stories Press under the title The Class.