Kavinsky Was an Actor First: Drive, Nightcall, Where to Watch

Kavinsky, the French producer whose track "Nightcall" plays over the opening credits of Drive, was found dead at his home in Paris on the night of Tuesday 28 July 2026. He was 50. The Paris prosecutor's office has opened an inquiry into the cause of death. Nothing has been ruled.

Almost every obituary this week has filed him as a musician who happened to land one enormous film sync. That undersells him by about six years. Before the Kavinsky records took over, Vincent Belorgey was a working screen actor in French and Belgian films, including two for Quentin Dupieux, the director who later made Rubber, Deerskin and Daaaaaalí!. The Movie Database still lists acting, not music, as his primary department. If you want to watch him rather than only listen to him, that filmography is where to look. And if you came here only for Drive, the short version is this: free with ads in the US, several options in the UK, nothing at all in India. Full breakdown below.

What is confirmed, and what is only reported

Confirmed. Belorgey was found dead at his Paris home on the evening of Tuesday 28 July 2026, aged 50. The Paris prosecutor's office made the death public on 29 July and said an investigation had been opened to determine the circumstances, noting that first responders found no suspicious elements at the scene. He was three days short of his 51st birthday, having been born in Seine-Saint-Denis on 31 July 1975.

Reported, not confirmed. French daily Le Figaro cited a police source saying Belorgey had complained of headaches for several days beforehand, and that a stroke is one possibility being considered. Deadline, Consequence and other outlets have carried that reporting with the same caveat attached. It is a line of inquiry, not a finding. Anyone telling you definitively how Kavinsky died is running ahead of the evidence. As of 31 July 2026, the cause of death remains under investigation and no official determination has been published.

French outlets reported tributes from President Emmanuel Macron and the country's culture ministry, alongside messages from across the French electronic scene. That is the world he came up in during the 2000s, the one built around Daft Punk, Justice, Sébastien Tellier, SebastiAn and the late DJ Mehdi.

Five screen roles between 2002 and 2007

The acting came first, and it was not a sideline. Between 2002 and 2007, overlapping at the end with the first Kavinsky records, Belorgey appeared in a run of French and Belgian films that sit squarely in the same deadpan, absurdist corner of European cinema that later produced Dupieux's better known work. Here is the verified list.

Nonfilm (2002)

Quentin Dupieux's first long-form film, shot on 16mm. At 48 minutes it is a medium-length film rather than a full feature, and it is built around a seven-strong credited cast caught inside a film shoot that goes badly wrong. Belorgey is one of them. Credit listings disagree on the character name, with some giving Pattt and The Movie Database giving Vince, so treat that detail as unsettled. What is not in dispute is that this was the screen debut for both Belorgey and Sébastien Tellier, two musicians who found their way into film well before film found its way into their music.

Aaltra (2004)

The black-and-white road comedy from Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern, in which two neighbours who loathe each other are both left in wheelchairs and end up travelling to Finland together. Belorgey has a small part, listed as a railway employee.

Atomik Circus: le retour de James Bataille (2004)

A genuinely strange science-fiction comedy from the brothers Didier and Thierry Poiraud, where he is credited as Boon and as Ricardo Bello-Radio Skotlett. The Belgian director Bouli Lanners is in the same cast, playing a motorcycle cop, and he hired Belorgey for his own film the following year.

Ultranova (2005)

Lanners hired him for his own debut feature, a quiet Belgian drama about three drifting people on the edge of Liège. Belorgey plays Verbrugghe. By this point he had also started making music, because 2005 is the year the Kavinsky project properly begins.

Steak (2007)

The one to start with if you only watch one. Dupieux's first theatrical feature, starring the comic duo Eric Judor and Ramzy Bedia, with a score by Sébastien Tellier, SebastiAn and Dupieux himself under his Mr Oizo alias. Belorgey plays Dan, leader of a gang called the Chivers. It is the clearest surviving record of him as a performer, and it is also the film where the acting career and the music career finally sit on the same credits page.

How he stopped acting

The switch was close to accidental. Rolling Stone's obituary reports that Dupieux, in his Mr Oizo capacity, handed Belorgey a discarded Apple computer with music software already loaded on it. His first release, the Teddy Boy EP, arrived in 2005 on Record Makers, a label Dupieux pointed him towards after hearing "Testarossa Autodrive". In a 2007 interview he said the whole of Teddy Boy was written and recorded on a Yamaha DX7, the synthesiser behind a great deal of the 1980s sound he was reaching for.

Around that he built the Kavinsky persona: a driver who crashed a Ferrari Testarossa in 1986 and returned in 2006 as an undead producer with red eyes and blue skin. The records tell that character's story in sequence. It is, in effect, a film role he wrote for himself and then released on vinyl instead of shooting it.

Banger (2025), his last credited screen appearance

He did come back to acting, once. Banger, released in 2025 and directed by So-Me of the Ed Banger orbit, stars Vincent Cassel as Luis, a has-been DJ who performs as Scorpex and gets recruited by police to bust a criminal gang tied to his rival. 2manydjs scored it. The Movie Database credits Kavinsky as The Record Seller. It is a small part, and it is by a distance the easiest of his screen credits to actually watch right now, including in India.

How "Nightcall" ended up over the opening of Drive

"Nightcall" was released on 2 April 2010, ahead of the film rather than for it. Kavinsky co-produced the track with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk, Lovefoxxx of the Brazilian band CSS sang the answering half, and SebastiAn mixed it. Inside the world of the persona, the song is the dead driver phoning an ex-partner to accept that she has moved on. That is the entire premise: a man who is not quite alive, calling at night, going nowhere in particular.

Nicolas Winding Refn placed it under the opening credits of Drive in 2011, over Ryan Gosling's nameless driver moving through Los Angeles after dark, and the two things fused permanently. The single was later certified diamond in France. Cliff Martinez's score carries most of the film's emotional weight across its 100 minutes, but "Nightcall" is the part everyone can hum, and it is why a synth record from 2010 is now inseparable from a crime picture released the following year.

The last act of that story was public and enormous. On 11 August 2024, Kavinsky performed "Nightcall" at the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics alongside Angèle and Phoenix. A studio version of that collaboration followed on 20 September 2024 and reached number three in France. Several outlets have since reported that the ceremony made it the most Shazamed song in a single day, a claim we could not confirm independently.

Where to watch Drive

Availability checked on 31 July 2026 against The Movie Database and JustWatch listings. Streaming rights move constantly, so re-check before you commit to a rental.

United States

Drive is free with ads on Xumo Play. That is the cheapest legitimate route and it needs no subscription. If you would rather have a clean copy, the film is available to rent or buy from Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, Google Play, YouTube and Fandango at Home, and to rent only from Plex and Spectrum On Demand. There is currently no major ad-free subscription service carrying it in the US.

United Kingdom

The UK is the best served of the three markets. Drive streams with a subscription on Amazon Prime Video and on ITVX Premium. Free with ads, it is on ITVX, Tubi, Plex, Rakuten TV and Prime Video's ad-supported free tier. Rentals and purchases run through Apple TV, Rakuten, Amazon, Google Play, Sky Store and YouTube.

One correction worth flagging, because a few tribute pieces this week have pointed people there: the BFI Player page for Drive currently reads as unavailable. The film has sat on that service in the past under its subscription tier, but as of today it is not a working option. Use ITVX or Prime Video instead.

India

Not available, at all. Drive cannot be streamed, rented or bought in India through any legal service. JustWatch's India page states that it checked 1,592 services and found the title in 24 other countries but not this one, and The Movie Database returns no Indian providers whatsoever. This is a standing licensing gap rather than a temporary outage.

If you are in India and want to see him on screen this week, watch Banger instead. It is on Netflix in India, as well as in the US and the UK. His scene is brief, but it is the one piece of his acting work that is a single click away in all three markets.

The rest of the filmography is harder to reach

Here the honest answer is an unsatisfying one. Steak, Aaltra and Ultranova have no streaming, rental or purchase option in the US, the UK or India. All three are available in France, where Steak rents and sells widely across Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Canal VOD, LaCinetek and others, and Aaltra streams on Canal+ and Molotov. Nonfilm has no listed digital home in any of these markets.

Outside France, physical media and repertory screenings are realistically the only route today. Nothing has been announced about that changing. To check what is actually available where you are, our discover tool filters by streaming service and region.

Frequently asked questions

How did Kavinsky die?

No cause of death has been confirmed. The Paris prosecutor's office opened an investigation after he was found dead at his Paris home on 28 July 2026, and said that first responders found nothing suspicious at the scene. Le Figaro reported, citing a police source, that he had complained of headaches for several days and that a stroke is being considered. That is reporting on an open investigation, not an official ruling.

What movies was Kavinsky in?

As an actor: Nonfilm (2002), Aaltra (2004), Atomik Circus: le retour de James Bataille (2004), Ultranova (2005), Steak (2007) and, most recently, Banger (2025). He also appears as himself in documentary work including A Cross the Universe and The Rise of the Synths. He did not act in Drive. His contribution to that film is the song.

Is Drive streaming free anywhere?

In two of the three markets covered here, yes. In the US it is free with ads on Xumo Play. In the UK it is free with ads on ITVX, Tubi, Plex, Rakuten TV and the Prime Video ad tier. In India there is no free option and no paid one either.

Who sings "Nightcall"?

Kavinsky performs the pitched-down male vocal. The female response is sung by Lovefoxxx of the Brazilian band CSS. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk co-produced the track and SebastiAn mixed it.

What was Kavinsky's real name?

Vincent Belorgey, born on 31 July 1975 in Seine-Saint-Denis, France. Kavinsky was a character he wrote and performed rather than simply a stage name, which is part of why the acting years matter to the music.

Did his music appear in anything besides Drive?

Yes. The Movie Database also credits his songs on The Lincoln Lawyer (2011). SebastiAn's remix of "Testarossa Autodrive" was used in Grand Theft Auto IV and Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. He released two studio albums, OutRun in 2013 and Reborn in 2022, plus a run of EPs beginning with Teddy Boy in 2005.

What to watch next

• Browse by streaming service and region on Discover, so you do not plan a night around a film that turns out to be geo-locked.
• Sadie Sink's roles and where to watch them, another filmography guide built credit by credit.
• Jack Quaid's movies and where to watch them, for tracing a performer through the films that made them.
• Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey: cast and release details, the next big director-and-soundtrack event picture.
• Dhurandhar: The Revenge and its international Netflix rollout, another case where the answer changes entirely depending on which country you are in.

If you have ten minutes today, play the opening of Drive and then queue Banger. Between one of the most quoted title sequences of the last fifteen years and a small comic cameo in a Netflix comedy, they cover both halves of what Vincent Belorgey actually did for a living.