Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée is dead. He died on December 26th in his home near Montréal, like the Hollywood Reporter citing Vallé’s production partner Nathan Ross. He was 58 years old, so far nothing is known about the cause of death.
The filmmaker became known for films such as “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013) and “Wild” (2014). He directed the television series “Big Little Lies” and “Sharp Objects” for HBO. Vallée was born in Montréal in 1963 and studied film at the Université du Québec. His father worked on the radio and brought home many records from disco to punk. Vallée became a passionate music fan, DJing in his youth and later compiling individual mixtapes for his actors to help them prepare for their roles.
He began his career with short films and music videos before making his first feature film “Liste noire” in Canada in 1995. One of his dream projects was a biopic about the singer Janis Joplin with Amy Adams in the lead role, but this never came about due to a legal dispute between the production companies involved.
Vallée had a close working friendship with Reese Witherspoon
In his drama “Dallas Buyers Club” He told the life story of the AIDS patient Rod Woodroof, played by Hollywood star Matthew McConaughey. Woodroof smuggled unapproved drugs from Mexico to Texas for himself and other people with HIV in the 1980s. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards and received three trophies.
Vallée had a close working friendship with the actress and producer Reese Witherspoon, with whom he played the dropout drama “Wild” and shot the first season of the thriller series “Big Little Lies”. He does not treat television projects any differently than his cinema projects, said Vallée: “I plan and direct every series as if it were a long feature film”. The shooting for the series “Big Little Lies” and “Sharp Objects” took place one after the other and became a marathon project for the director, who had to shoot more than 180 days in a good 20 months.
Both series were a success, which is why its production company Crazyrose only concluded a first-look deal for further projects with the pay broadcaster HBO this year. Vallée should have started his third HBO series “Gorilla and the Bird” soon.