A disappearance which shocked French cinema. On January 19, 2022, actor Gaspard Ulliel, noted for his brilliant performances in A long engagement Sunday, Saint-Laurent or even Just the end of the world, lost his life at the age of 37 following a violent skiing accident. Years later, those close to Gaëlle Pietri’s ex still remember this talented actor and his shy and mysterious aura, the antithesis of the star system.
His best friend, the Belgian actor and director Jérémie Rénier, had difficulty recovering from this loss: to rediscover the taste for life, he has undertook the crazy project to cross the Arctic ice floe with the explorer Loury Lag. An experience depicted in his documentary From one world to anotherreleased on June 10 in theaters. The 45-year-old artist agreed to confide in our colleagues at Galain an interview published on their site this Saturday, June 13, and to return to his beautiful and long friendship with Gaspard Ulliel.
Jérémie Rénier: the Belgian actor pays tribute to his best friend Gaspard Ulliel
With the magazine’s journalists, Jérémie Rénier remembers his first meeting with the dark angel of French cinema, the most obvious of all. “It was his birthday. A mutual friend, who later became our agent, told me: ‘You absolutely have to meet this boy.’ We were celebrating her 18th birthday, and she was right. I understood immediately that I was dealing with someone unique.” he remembers, before giving more details on the personality of Gaspard Ulliel: “There was a singular air about him. A presence, an elegance mixed with something more strange, elusive.”
An unforgettable meeting which marked the start of a long friendship, as confirmed by the first person concerned in this exclusive interview: “Things built slowly. He was a modest person, with a form of distance. You had to deepen the relationship to really ‘meet’ him. He often came to my shoots. We formed a sort of ‘clan of two’, without really being part of a cinema family. Between us there was a common, distanced outlook on this profession.” Together, the two friends starred in two films: The Vintner’s Luckin 2009, and Saint Laurentin 2014.
How did Jérémie Rénier recover from the death of Gaspard Ulliel?
Jérémie Rénier also spoke about the pain felt following the loss of his best friend: “It was incomprehension, immeasurable pain. Like for everyone. There is a form of astonishment in losing someone close to you in this way. For a long time, it didn’t seem real.”, explains the man who put his career on hold for four years to carry out his mourning work. “I was in a profound loss of meaning. Nothing really had the same flavor anymore. I had a vital need to slow down.”, he confirms. After contacting the adventurer Loury Lag, Jérémie Rénier plans his expedition: a three-month polar crossing between Alaska and Canada.
“I initially thought about accompanying an expedition and, ultimately, this trip became more intimate, he explains. This trip also reconnected me to life: friendship, nature, silence, beauty. Even in the darkest times, there can still be light.” A life-saving journey that helped him “move forward” following the death of his friend: “Not with the idea of ’repairing’, because certain absences remain. But he helped me put breath and movement back into something that was frozen. And maybe accept that we continue to live with certain woundsotherwise.” A great way to rediscover the meaning of life.
