Hippolyte Girardot (born Frédéric Girardot; 10 October 1955) is a French actor, film director and screenwriter.

A loner by nature, Hippolyte Girardot intended to become an illustrator. He dreamed of working as a production designer on film sets and tried his luck at the entrance exams for the École des Arts Décoratifs. There he was offered a series of short films as part of a workshop with a group of teenagers from the suburbs. Even after he first appeared on screen as the son of the actor Claude Rich in Yannick Bellon's film "La Femme de Jean", a director who was a friend of his mother, he still had no intention of becoming an actor and continued to take on various jobs that were offered to him.

Girardot's taste for acting emerged during the shooting of Aline Issermann's film "Le Destin de Juliette" (1983), and then again with the same director in "Le Grand Amour". His first professional recognition came with a nomination for the "Most Promising Young Actor" award in 1985 for "Un beau plaisir"; he continued his career with Godard ("Prénom Carmen") and other notable projects, in particular "Fort Saganne" and "Jean de Florette II", where he plays a schoolteacher in love with Emmanuelle Béart. Recognition in cinema came to him in 1990 with "Un monde sans pitié" — Éric Rochant's disillusioned view of society; his character Hippo resonated with a whole generation: ironically aimless, yet charming.

The following year Girardot took the lead role of a photographer taken hostage in Lebanon in Maroun Bagdadi's film "Hors la vie". He embodied the mysterious seducer ("Après l'amour", "Le Parfum d'Yvonne"), but more often found himself in comedies: utterly mad in "Barjo" and unemployed in "Vive la République" (1997) by his close associate Éric Rochant.