Gaspard Ulliel, who has died aged 37 after a skiing accident in the Alps, was a promising young actor who appeared in both French and English language films.
During his career, he was nominated for three César awards. He won Best Newcomer in 2005 for his performance in A Very Long Engagement, a French film that depicted what happened to men accused of injuring themselves to escape the horrors of war.
Ulliel was nominated for a César when he played the title role in the 2014 film Saint Laurent, about the designer Yves Saint Laurent.
He won his second César for the 2016 film It’s Only the End of the World, this time for Best Actor. In it, Ulliel played a writer who must tell his estranged family that he is dying.
Gaspard Ulliel was born in Paris. His father Serge was a designer. His mother Christine was a stylist. He credited his “pretty good” English with attending a bilingual school.
His film career started by chance when he was around 11 years old. A friend of his mother’s had started an agency and needed “youngsters” as Ulliel told the story. In his youth, he appeared in many French-language television shows and films.
With hopes of becoming a director, Ulliel studied cinema at the University of Saint-Denis in France for two years. However, his acting career ended up taking precedence.
Ulliel played Hannibal in the 2007 film Hannibal Rising which followed the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. He described the role as a real challenge, though it was “a dream role for a young actor”.
He explained to Clash: “I had to offer something different but stay sufficiently close to what had been done already so that people coming to see the film would find the Hannibal they already knew. It wasn’t particularly easy, but I got an enormous amount of pleasure out of doing it because it’s a fascinating character.”
Though it brought him to an international audience, the film was not favourably reviewed.
In the 2018 film To the Ends of the World, Ulliel played Robert Tassen, a young French soldier. Film critic Guy Lodge praised his performance in Variety magazine.
“Something of a go-to actor for characters marked (or unmarked, rather) by beautiful, hostile inscrutability, Ulliel carries the film’s extended passages of non-verbal threat with aplomb,” he wrote.
The actor will also appear in Moon Knight, a Marvel series for Disney + which comes out 30 March this year.
His interests outside cinema included fashion and listening to a wide range of music including rap, rock, reggae, jazz and soul.
He is survived by his son Orso, whom he had with the singer Gaëlle Piétri.
Gaspard Ulliel, actor, born 25 November 1984, died 19 January 2022
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