Hervé Paillet is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 born with atrophied

Atrophy

Atrophy is the partial or complete wasting away of a part of the body. Causes of atrophy include mutations , poor nourishment, poor circulation, loss of hormonal support, loss of nerve supply to the target organ, disuse or lack of exercise or disease intrinsic to the tissue itself...

 legs. He is the fifth child of his family. His legs were amputated when he was three years old, and he uses a wheelchair. Eventually he learned to run with his arms and became a weightlifter. As a teenager he won a silver medal in weightlifting at the 1984 Summer Paralympics

1984 Summer Paralympics

The 1984 Summer Paralympics were the seventh Paralympic Games to be held. They were held in two separate locations, Stoke Mandeville, United Kingdom and in the Mitchel Athletic Complex and Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, United States of America The 1984 Summer Paralympics were the...

. He participated in two more Paralympic Games in 1992 and 1996 as a powerlifter. In both 1994 and 1995 he won a French weightlifting championship.

Paillet is married and he has two daughters.