The Day of the Jackal is a 1973 political thriller film directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Edward Fox and Michael Lonsdale. Based on the 1971 novel of the same name by Frederick Forsyth, the film is about a professional assassin known only as the "Jackal" who is hired to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963.

Michael Edward Lonsdale Crouch, commonly known as Michael Lonsdale and sometimes as Michel Lonsdale, was a French actor and author who appeared in over 180 films and television shows. He is best known in the English-speaking world for his roles as the villain Hugo Drax in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker, the detective Claude Lebel in The Day of the Jackal, The Abbot in The Name of the Rose and Dupont d'Ivry in The Remains of the Day.