A tragic accident. French actor Gaspard Ulliel died on Wednesday, January 19, following a ski accident, according to news agency AFP. He was 37.
Ulliel was skiing in the French Alps when he collided with another person on the slopes and suffered a brain injury. The actor, who stars in Marvel’s upcoming series Moon Knight, was then air-lifted to a hospital in Grenoble, France. Local authorities are looking into the accident, per AFP.
Ulliel is survived by his girlfriend, Gaelle Petri, and their son Orso, 6.
The Saint Laurent star was an acclaimed actor in his native country, earning three Cesar nominations over the course of his career. Ulliel won Most Promising Actor in 2004 for his work in A Very Long Engagement and took home the Best Actor award in 2016 for his performance in It’s Only the End of the World. In the United States, Ulliel was best known for 2007’s Hannibal Rising, in which he played a young Hannibal Lecter, and for playing designer Yves Saint Laurent in 2014.
The Chanel model also stars in Marvel’s upcoming Disney+ series, Moon Knight, opposite Oscar Isaac. Ulliel plays art thief Anton Mogart, who turns into antagonist Midnight Man after a fight with the titular hero. Though details about his character have been kept under wraps ahead of the series’ release, it’s likely that Isaac, 42, played a role in casting Ulliel as a producer.
“Well, I heard about it from Oscar Isaac, who lives like, you know, three blocks down the street from me in Brooklyn,” Ethan Hawke, who is rumored to play Moon Knight’s main villain, revealed during an August appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. “I was at a coffee shop. He came up to me, he’s like, … ‘Hey, want to be in the Moon Knight with me?’ I was like, yeah. So, it happened the right way, you know?”
In addition to casting, Isaac had a large role in developing the show and his character alongside Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. “Speaking with Kevin, I told him, ‘I’m going to come in with these big ideas, and if you don’t like them, that’s fair.’ And immediately, we saw it all,” the Scenes From a Marriage star told Variety while discussing the series in October 2021.
“I found so much room to do things that I’ve never done before and had been curious about and wanting to do,” Isaac continued. “I could not wait to get to set, and it was the biggest workload I’ve ever had in my career and most challenging; by the sheer amount of stuff we had to do in eight months, and even yet, I couldn’t wait to get to set and work.”
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