French Actor, Face of Chanel Perfume Gaspard Ulliel Has Died
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LONDON — French actor Gaspard Ulliel died at the age of 37 on Wednesday from injuries after sustaining a serious skiing accident the day before, the French press reported.
According to AFP, he was transported by helicopter on Tuesday to a hospital in Grenoble following a collision with another skier at the intersection of two blue slopes in the ski resort of La Rosière in the Savoie region around 4 p.m.
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Gaspard Ulliel was not equipped with a helmet, and the other skier emerged unscathed from the accident and was not hospitalized, French provincial daily newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré reported. He suffered from head trauma and was unconscious when he was rescued.
Ulliel is survived by his partner Gaëlle Piétri and their 6-year-old son Orso.
Carole Bethuel/2014 Mandarin Cinema/EuropaCorp/Orange Studio/Arte France Cinema/Scope Pictures
Ulliel is best known in the fashion industry for his longtime partnership with Chanel, serving as the face of its men’s fragrance Bleu de Chanel. He also appeared in the advertising campaign of Longchamp with Kate Moss in 2008.
“It is with deep sadness that we learned of Gaspard Ulliel’s passing,” Chanel said in a statement. “For 12 years, he was an ambassador for Chanel, but more importantly, he was a close friend of the house. We have been fortunate to have had by our side all these years a person endowed with great culture, [he is] an immense talent and of unparalleled kindness. He will be sorely missed. Our thoughts and prayers go to his family and his friends.”
As an actor, Ulliel is known for movies like “Hannibal Rising,” Bertrand Bonello’s “Saint Laurent” and “A Very Long Engagement,” which won him the Most Promising Actor award at 30th César Awards in 2005. He took home his second César Awards trophy in the Best Actor category in 2017 for his portrayal in “It’s Only the End of the World” by Xavier Dolan.
During the promotion of “Saint Laurent,” where he played the French designer, Ulliel told WWD that since becoming the face of Chanel’s men’s scent Blue in 2010, he has not worked much by his own admission.
“Because I had the financial comfort of the Chanel campaign, I told myself — and in hindsight, it was not the wisest thing — that I could take the time to pick the right projects,” he explained. “I put myself in a holding pattern and today, I realize this no longer suits me. I need to work in order to exist.”
Playing Saint Laurent was the role of a lifetime, Ulliel said at the time.
“I have rarely been offered such an emblematic, complex, and demanding role. I think I really managed to do my job once I realized that I should not imitate him, because it cancels out all emotion, and that it was by making him my own and somehow reinventing him that I would manage to convey emotion,” he added.
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He will be seen as Midnight Man in the upcoming Marvel series “Moon Knight,” alongside Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke.
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