Sad news for the film industry: the Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallee is dead. As Radio Canada announced on December 27, 2021, the filmmaker died on the evening of December 25, at the age of 58, in a residence in the Quebec City region. His son Emile confirmed the news, but no details were given on the cause of death.
Near Deadline, his friend and associate producer Nathan Ross reacted: “Jean-Marc was synonymous with creativity, authenticity and he tried to do things differently. He was a true artist and a generous and loving guy (…). He was a friend, a creative partner and an older brother to me. The Maestro will be sorely missed, but it’s heartwarming to know that his magnificent style and hard-hitting work that he shared with the world will live on.“
Jean-Marc Vallée was known to have directed the films Victoria: The Young Years of a Queen, Dallas Buyers Club, Wild or the popular series Big Little Lies. He began his career behind the camera in the early 1990s, after studying cinema at the University of Montreal. As early as 1995, he had attracted the attention of Hollywood by directing the drama Blacklist. But her first big movie was CRAZY, started in 1995 and released in 2005: the portrait of a Quebec family in the 1970s, which features the character of Zachary and his homosexual inclinations reprimanded by his father. Thanks to this feature film, which had been a great success all over the world, Jean-Marc Vallée had received eleven Genie Awards in Canada and fourteen trophies at the Jutra Awards in Quebec.
Several Oscar nominations
On the strength of this success, the director continued with the historic film Victoria: The Young Years of a Queen (2009) starring Emily Blunt. Then came the Franco-Canadian drama Café de Flore with Vanessa Paradis in 2011. Jean-Marc Vallée had strengthened his notoriety two years later by directing the biopic Dallas Buyers Club starring Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner, nominated for the Oscar for best picture in 2014. The following year he was back at the Oscars with the film Wild and his two named actresses, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.
Jean-Marc Vallée had reunited with Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern, but also Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley, for the series Big Little Lies. His latest project was also on television, with the miniseries Sharp Objects, released in 2018, with Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson.
Outside the film sets, Jean-Marc Vallée had married the writer Chantal Cadieux in Quebec, in 1990. The couple had two children, Alex and Emile (born in 1992 and 1996), before divorcing in 2006 .