Ten minutes before I sit down with Gaspard Ulliel in a Paris hotel room, he finds out he's been nominated for a César, France's Oscar, for his performance as Yves Saint Laurent in one of last year's dueling ysl iPhone case biopics. Days later, Ulliel wins Best Actor at the Lumières (which he describes as a French Golden Globes) for the same role. Nice timing, as Chanel premieres the new campaign for its men's fragrance Bleu de Chanel, with Ulliel once again the protagonist in an urgent film noir (or should that be film bleu?).
The first commercial was directed by Martin Scorsese, this one is the work of James Gray. What they share is a jaundiced view of celebrity, with Gray's offering a particularly dark comment on the price of fame. "That's exactly how he presented it to me," Ulliel agrees. "James and I talked about the strange relationship you can have to celebrity and fame. It's very flattering, you want it, and at the same time it's unbearable and want to run away. That's something I really know. And that was what he's trying to picture in the film."
Ulliel certainly does a lot of running away for Gray. "You are forever becoming who you are," murmurs the voice-over. Ulliel's quest feels especially urgent. That same quality has marked his career, with Saint Laurent being the latest in a string of tricky parts. "I want to push back the limits, try to transcend something," he says. "The idea with each role is to try to see something different, and go further and further. The choices you make as an actor in the end tell you a lot about yourself. For me, the dark side in my characters feels quite logical. If I want a character to be interesting to me, I have to find the ambivalence between light and darkness." Saint Laurent was a dream part in that respect. Ulliel had to go deeper than ever before.
It probably helped that he has a natural affinity for fashion. Ulliel's father was a designer, his mother a stylist. "I was an only child and she was playing with me all the time. I remember I had to fight to impose myself and make her understand I wanted to choose my own clothes." The Bleu campaign kind of brings him full circle, his mother's quilted Chanel bag being an early fashion memory.
But Ulliel's new alliance is personal to him for other reasons. "Perfume's very important for me. It's a way to introduce yourself to people. When you brush against someone, it's the first connection you have. And if you like the smell, it helps a rapprochement with the other person. But when it goes further and there's a real physical exchange, then it's about intimacy, and you want to have the real smell of the person, the real smell of their skin." Oh, what a French seducer Ulliel is, with his cute dimple.
But it's not a dimple, it's a tough guy scar from a Doberman bite when he was a kid. In France, they compare Ulliel to Sean Penn. He's happy about that. "I really like his physical power, and I'd hope to have a career like his." Someone else he's impressed by is Chanel's éminence grise Karl Lagerfeld. "I always feel this immense energy. And he's now at this stage in his career where he is totally free of everything, so he can say whatever he wants."
Is that Ulliel in 50 years? "I never try to think about myself as an actor in 20 years. This is just something you have to savor in the moment. That's what makes it so exciting and frightening at the same time." Wish him luck for the Césars on February 20.
Gaspard Ulliel - Bleu De Chanel Cologne Campaign
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