French screen and stage actor and men’s luxury goods model who won two César Awards before a tragic early death at age 37 following a skiing accident. He played the young Hannibal Lecter in horror film Hannibal Rising (2007) and fashion mogul Yves Saint Laurent in the biopic Saint Laurent (2014); he was the face of the Chanel men’s fragrance Bleu de Chanel.
He began his acting career in the early 2000s after appearing in a short film in 1996. Then he specialized in horror films, The Brotherhood of the Wolf and Hannibal Rising. In France, his career was launched by film director Michel Blanc (Embrassez qui vous voudrez in 2002) and he was offered a major role by Jean-Pierre Jeunet in Un long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A very long Engagement) with Audrey Tautou. For this film, he won the César for Most Promising Actor in 2004. In 2017, he won the César Award for Best Actor for his role in It’s Only the End of the World. He was cast as Anton Mogart / Midnight Man in the Disney+ TV series Moon Knight (2022).
He had a scar on his left cheek as a result of an attack from a doberman when he attempted to ride the dog like a horse at the age of six. He once quipped that the scar increased his emotional acting abilities because it looked like a dimple, and his obituary in the French newspaper Libération described him as having the “most famous scar in French cinema”.
Ulliel dated actress Cécile Cassel from 2005 to 2007. He had a brief relationship with Charlotte Casiraghi in 2007, and dated Jordane Crantelle from 2008 to 2013.
Since 2013 Ulliel had been in a relationship with model and singer Gaëlle Pietri. On 9 November 2015, it was announced that the couple were expecting their first child together. The couple’s son, Orso, was born on 12 January 2016.
On 18 January 2022, Ulliel was critically injured during a ski incident at around 4 PM at the La Rosière resort in Savoie, France, when he collided with another skier at an intersection between two slopes and suffered serious brain trauma. He was transported by helicopter to the trauma unit of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Grenoble Alpes in nearby La Tronche. He died the next day at the hospital at around 4:20 PM.
Link to Wikipedia biography