This Thursday, January 27, the late Gaspard Ulliel, who died in a skiing accident on January 19, will be buried. A tragic conclusion for such a promising career, which began by chance, without even having dreamed it, as he said himself…
The funeral of actor Gaspard Ulliel, who died in a skiing accident on January 19, will take place this Thursday, January 27 in Paris.
If the actor was known to the general public for films like A Long Engagement Sunday (2004) by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Saint Laurent (2014) by Bertrand Bonello and Just the End of the World (2016) by Xavier Dolan, which had won the César for best actor in 2017, it is retrospectively moving and interesting to look back on the beginnings of an eclectic career.
In this case, how had he been spotted, he who said he had just arrived in this environment “totally by chance” ?
Born in November 1984 to stylist parents, he had spent his childhood between school and the family apartment, in the center of Paris, where he drew for long hours. It was a friend of her mother’s who suggested that she join the agency of actors she had just created. At the age of 12, with a small role in Aline Issermann’s television series, A Woman in White, with Sandrine Bonnaire, Gaspard Ulliel took his first steps in front of a camera.
In 2018, the actor returned to his career at length, in an exciting exchange with Pierre Murat, as part ofan event organized by Telerama.
“I landed in this job completely by chance, it was not a desire to start, unlike other actors who have always known they wanted to do that. It’s quite a strange feeling, because at some point the question of legitimacy arises, desire. This vocation has been quite beneficial for me. As a child, I was a fairly introverted person, unhealthily shy. I was always the one who was a little apart, out of step. […] And then one day they came to get me; initially to play in TV movies. It was amazing. I suddenly said to myself: “why me?”
This meeting [avec l’amie de sa mère qui lui a proposé d’intégrer son agence de talents] helped me to come out of myself, to try to do violence to myself and to overcome fears. Especially to transform them into fact. That’s something fundamental for an actor. […] My parents were in favor of this career, and it was not necessarily something obvious, especially at such a young age. They insisted that I follow my studies until the baccalaureate, and that I only shoot during school holidays. […] I finally had an extremely slow but very regular progression. I started with very small roles in unit films, then more important roles in TV movies, then then small roles in feature films.