Olivier Gruner was born on August 2nd, 1960 in Paris. His father is a successful surgeon with his own surgery. His two brothers also made academic careers. When Olivier was 18, he went to an elite force of the french army, where he stayed 4 years. Most of this time he was in Djibouti and Somalia. At this time he already trained karate. When he left the army, he went to the french Alps and started to train kick-boxing. He choose this place because he could ski, one of his biggest hobbies. After 3 years of hard training, he became for the first time French Kickbox Champion. He defended the title two times and in 1987 he became World Kickbox Champion. A year after, he retired from kick-boxing. So his name was known, at least in France, and he worked as a model and appeared in some TV spots. He had a job at the film festival in Cannes, where he put up a poster of himself. 2 days later a man came and invited him for test shoots to Los Angeles, which lead to his first film "Angel town". Some more, mainly martial arts, movies followed.
