Gaspard Ulliel, discreet star of French cinema, dies after a ski accident at the age of 37
Obituary
The winner of two César awards, star of films such as 'Saint Laurent' and 'Hannibal, the origin of evil', was hospitalized after suffering a head injury
Alex VicenteMadrid -The French actor Gaspard Ulliel has died this Wednesday at the age of 37, one day after having suffered a ski accident at the La Rosière resort, in the Alps, where he was habitual in the winter months. Ulliel was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Grenoble after a collision with another skier at the crossroads between two blue slopes that caused a serious head injury. Thus ends the brief but intense career of this discreet star of French cinema, winner of two César awards and popular for his performances in Saint Laurent and in Hannibal, the origin of evil, who after some meteoric beginnings decided to favor larger-scale roles. in auteur projects and moved away from the blockbusters without substance that were endlessly proposed to him.
Born in 1984 in Boulogne-Billancourt, on the outskirts of Paris, Ulliel had played small roles in The Pact of Wolves and Kiss Whoever You Want when André Téchiné chose him to star in Fugitives (2003) alongside a star like Emmanuelle Béart. He would end up rising to fame with Long Courtship Sunday (2004), Jean-Pierre Jeunet's first film after the great success of Amélie, for which Ulliel won the César for best revelation actor (in which it was already his third nomination ). Shortly after, he shot an episode of Paris, je t'aime (2006) with his admired Gus Van Sant and then made the leap to the cinema in English with Hannibal, the origin of evil (2007), a prequel where he played the protagonist of The silence of the lambs during their youth. Those tremendous beginnings in the cinema were followed by a more difficult period, in which the roles he expected did not rain down on him. “Towards the age of 25, everything got complicated. He was too young to play as an adult, but too old to continue playing as a teenager”, confessed Ulliel in an interview published in Icon in 2015.
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Too beardless to play the father, too handsome to play the neighbor next door and unwilling to appear in those dramatic comedies that are so popular in French cinema, Ulliel was somewhat blurred. He found the right path again with two directors who knew how to take advantage of the cloudy eroticism that emanated from his animal face, governed by the scar that a bite from a Doberman left him, at the age of six, on his left cheek. The first was Bertrand Bonello, who gave him the leading role in Saint Laurent (2014), a biopic of the great French couturier who was vehemently opposed by his widower, Pierre Bergé. The character was a perfect match for Ulliel because of his relative physical resemblance to Saint Laurent, but also because he was the son of two fashion designers: his mother worked with Martine Sitbon and his father is dedicated to creating collections of sportswear. His second savior would be the Canadian Xavier Dolan with Only the End of the World (2016), where he played the playwright Jean-Luc Lagarce's alter ego, a young man who returns to visit his family to announce that he has a terminal disease. For her, Ulliel would win his second César, this time as a leading actor.
The popularity of the interpreter, father of a six-year-old boy with the model Gaëlle Pietri, also responded to his work in advertising. As a young man, Ulliel was the face of the Longchamp brand alongside Kate Moss, although his greatest foray into the world of luxury was campaigning for Chanel's Bleu perfume in successive advertisements directed by Martin Scorsese, James Gray and Steve McQueen. Still, his international career never really took off. He tried to take advantage of Hannibal's pull, but the experience was not fruitful and he ended up leaving Los Angeles to return to Paris, where he reconnected with auteur cinema. In the last two decades, Ulliel has shot with directors such as Rithy Panh (A Dam Against the Pacific, an adaptation of Marguerite Duras with Isabelle Huppert), Bertrand Tavernier (The Princess of Montpensier), Pierre Schoeller (A People and Their King), Justine Triet (Sibyl's reflection), Stéphanie Di Gusto (The Ballerina), Guillaume Nicloux (The Ends of the World, alongside Gérard Dépardieu) or Benoît Jacquot (Eva, again with Huppert).
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Alex VincentHe is a cultural journalist. He has been part of the Babelia team since 2020.
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