Quebec director and producer Jean-Marc Vallée, who won an Emmy for directing the hit HBO series Big Little Lies and including the 2013 drama Dallas Buyers Club won multiple Oscar nominations, has passed away. He was 58 years old.
His representative Bumble Ward said on Sunday that Jean-Marc Vallée died suddenly in his chalet near Quebec, over the weekend.
Jean-Marc Vallée has been acclaimed for his approach to cinema, directing stars such as Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal over the past decade.
He directed Emily Blunt in The Young Victoria in 2009 and became a sought-after name in Hollywood after Dallas Buyers Club, starring Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto, has won six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
The film CRAZY, published in 2015, was a huge success in Quebec, winning no less than fourteen Jutra Prizes – now called the Iris Prize – and ten Genie Prizes.
Jean-Marc Vallée often shot with natural light and hand-held cameras and gave actors the freedom to improvise the script and move around the location of a scene. The team traveled the Pacific Ridge Trail to shoot the film Wild, released in 2014, which starred Reese Witherspoon.
“They can move wherever they want,” the filmmaker said of his actors in a 2014 interview with The Associated Press. “It’s giving importance to the narrative, to the emotion, to the characters. I try not to get too involved. I don’t need to interrupt the benefits. A lot of times the cinematographer and I would say, “This place sucks. It is not very interesting. But, hey, that’s life. ””
He teamed up with Reese Witherspoon to direct the first season of Big Little Lies in 2017, and directed actress Amy Adams in the series Sharp Objects, in 2018, also for HBO.
– With information from Ryan Pearson of The Associated Press in Los Angeles.