Jean-Marc Vallée, 'Dallas Buyers Club' director, dies at 58 (original) (raw)
Jean-Marc Vallée, the acclaimed director behind the Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club and the HBO hit Big Little Lies, died unexpectedly at his cabin outside Quebec City this weekend. He was 58.
His publicist confirmed the news to EW, though a cause of death wasn't made known at this time.
Vallée made a mark in the industry through his naturalistic approach to filmmaking, focusing on the use of natural light. Over the years, he's worked with such talent as Reese Witherspoon, Amy Adams, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Matthew McConaughey.
Jean-Marc Vallée. Rich Polk/Getty Images
"My heart is broken. My friend. I love you," Witherspoon tweeted in response to the news.
Dern also shared a message about the "beautiful" Vallée on Twitter, accompanied by a photo of them together.
"The world has lost one of our great and purest artists and dreamers," she wrote. "And we lost our beloved friend. Our hearts are broken."
Shailene Woodley, Witherspoon and Dern's costar on Big Little Lies, shared her own message on Instagram Stories.
"i am in shock. complete and utter shock," she wrote. "my f---ing god death is the worst, but i guess somehow i know you will turn it into a grand adventure one for the books. one i cant wait to read & to watch when my time comes. it doesn't make sense though dude. it doesn't make sense. maybe when we wake up tomorrow you'll be there laughing saying it was just a satirical short film you made. that it's not real."
Shailene Woodley shares a message about the passing of 'Big Little Lies' director Jean-Marc Vallee. Shailene Woodley/Instagram
Gyllenhaal, who worked with Vallée on 2015's Demolition, praised the filmmaker's "instinct" for directing during an interview with EW and PEOPLE's then-editorial director Jess Cagle in 2016.
"I had heard and read about his process and how he films his movies and how he treats his actors and just his whole way of circumventing the whole kind of Hollywood vanity style of filmmaking," Gyllenhaal said. "I loved it. I loved hearing about it, and then when I got to set, [there was] no makeup, there was no lighting."
"He's constantly moving in for a close-up, and then the next take he is running across the stage and getting one shot and then coming back for a close-up again," he added. "There was really no rhyme or reason to the way in which he creates. It's just that instinct."
Born March 9, 1963, the Canadian filmmaker got his start making music videos before making his first feature film, the French-language thriller Liste noire in 1995. The movie that helped break him into Hollywood, however, was 2005's coming-of-age drama C.R.A.Z.Y., about a young gay man growing up with four brothers in a conservative household in Quebec.
Afterwards, he directed Emily Blunt in 2009's The Young Victoria, an ensemble with Vanessa Paradis and Hélène Florent in 2011's Café de Flore, and McConaughey and Jared Leto in 2013's Dallas Buyers Club.
Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey star in 'Dallas Buyers Club'. Focus Features
McConaughey won Best Actor at the Oscars in 2014 for his performance as AIDS-stricken Ron Woodroof, who created a group to find and distribute drugs for those living with HIV and AIDS. Leto also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Rayon, a drug-addicted HIV-positive trans woman. Vallée had been nominated for Best Editing, while the film at large earned a Best Picture nom.
Vallée went on to work with Witherspoon in 2014's Wild, adapted from Cheryl Strayed's book. He spoke with EW in 2014 about the film, offering a peek into his process approaching the music to chronicle Cheryl's solo hike after a personal tragedy.
"I want to have a contrast between the flashbacks, where there's civilization and music and culture, and then back on the trail, where there's almost nothing," he said. "See where she's thinking in the first act about her mother, and then we cut to the place where she's studying with her mom. There's the Leonard Cohen track playing, 'Suzanne.' And then we're back on the trail and there's no more music. There's no more music — and then suddenly [the] very distant, ghostly sound of 'Suzanne' again, as she starts singing over it."
Resse Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Zoe Kravitz, Nicole Kidman, and Laura Dern in 'Big Little Lies'.
The pair would reunite on Big Little Lies, also starring Kidman, Dern, Woodley, and Zoe Kravitz.
"This is all Reese's fault," Vallée had told EW of the genesis of the project. "I was about to take a vacation, and I was so tired. But then I read it, and I couldn't abandon it after I started."
He ended up helming all episodes of the first season of the HBO drama and executive-produced the series.
Vallée gained further notoriety for directing Adams in the HBO Emmy-nominated miniseries Sharp Objects.
Vallée had a production company with his producing collaborator Nathan Ross called Crazyrose. The banner had just struck a three-year first-look deal with HBO and HBO Max, Deadline reported this past April.
"He was a friend, creative partner and an older brother to me," Ross said in a statement to EW. "The maestro will sorely be missed, but it comforts knowing his beautiful style and impactful work he shared with the world will live on."
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