In 2014, Gaspard Ulliel impressed by playing the famous couturier Yves Saint Laurent on the big screen. Back on the preparation of the actor, necessarily special.
For Bertrand Bonello, Gaspard Ulliel delivered in 2014 one of the most striking performances of his career by slipping into the guise of the famous French couturier Yves Saint Laurent. In a soberly titled biopic Saint Laurent, focused on a specific decade in the fashion designer’s life, between 1967 and 1976, the late French comedian radiated.
In order to embody this legend on screen, Ulliel had worked a lot on his voice and his diction. “For our first working session, Bertrand sent me interviews available on the INA archives”, he said. “He insisted on the particular diction of Saint Laurent, a grace which was, he said, fragility without being femininity. Something quite difficult to grasp and reproduce”.
“The voice, oddly, is the last thing I found. (…) I had some reluctance, some doubts, I wondered how far I had to go”also declared the actor at the microphone of DashFUN. “At one point, I even wondered if I shouldn’t keep my voice.”
“Until the last moment, I didn’t know, I didn’t even really work anything on the voice. I had music in mind, it came out spontaneously when I shot the first scene, first day”, he continued. “Bertrand reacted quite well, we adjusted two or three things and afterwards, we really didn’t ask ourselves the question. I would say that it really came quite naturally and instinctively.”
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To play YSL, Gaspard Ulliel also had to lose twelve kilos, so that his build resembled that of the fashion designer. “Yves had a tall silhouette with long arms, he was slender while having cheeks”noted the actor. “I lost weight in order to get closer to this silhouette. I think that at the time men were thinner than today.”
“I think what was important for me was to lose weight to find myself in a body that was no longer mine”he said to our microphone. “I think it was an important trigger to arrive on set in an envelope that was no longer mine.”
And Gaspard Ulliel concludes: “What mattered to me was not to render something mimicry or imitation, but rather to appropriate all of that and to render a truth, that it be something that rings true The idea was not to become Yves Saint Laurent but to make it true.”
The trailer for “Saint Laurent”: