Jean-Marc Vallee, director of Dallas Buyers Club, Big Little Lies passes away aged 58

The Canadian filmmaker had won an Emmy Award for his work on Big Little lies and had been nominated for an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club

Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallee has passed away at his cabin near Quebec, Canada. The Academy Award nominated filmmaker was 58.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the filmmaker had died suddenly over the weekend and the cause of death is yet to be revealed. The reports had been confirmed by Vallee’s producing partner Nathan Ross.

Vallee had started his filmmaking career with helming short films and music videos. He had made his feature film directorial debut with the 1995 thriller Black List. His breakthrough came with the coming of age film C.R.A.Z.Y. a film based on his own youth, which became a critical and commercial hit in Canada. After directing Emily Blunt’s The Young Victoria and the drama Café de Flore, Vallee went on to film Dallas Buyers Club.

The biographical drama, based on the life of Ron Woodroof, told the story of an AIDS patient who sells experimental drugs to people affected with the disease. The critically acclaimed film went on to earn six Academy Award nominations, winning Best Actor and Supporting Actor for Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto respectively.

His other popular films include Reese Witherspoon’s Wild (2014) and the Jake Gyllenhaal starrer Demolition (2015).

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Vallee was also well known for helming the shows Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects. For the former, the filmmaker had won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing. The HBO series, based on a book of the same name, featured an ensemble cast including Witherspoon and Laura Dern whom Vallee had directed in Wild.

The filmmaker is survived by his children Alex and Émile.

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