Madame, I am addressing this letter to you without even knowing you, without knowing you well. Outside, behind my bedroom window in the woods where I… - Xavier Dolan

Gaspard was often the one who listens and does not speak. We have often talked about his discretion or his gentleness, of the mystery that he did not intentionally cultivate. But little has been said about his eloquence. I've heard him talk so much about his love for his profession. About life, the beautiful things, in a neat language that celebrates the musicality, the scarcity of words while many were making a point to speak first, Gaspard was distilling from a thought, a more accomplished, more chiseled look. A bit like the one he poses at the end of Saint Laurent from his friend Bertrand Bonello, in this moment when he's eyeing the camera and lays his eyes precisely on the situation that is life and our souls as well. He seems to have understood something that has possibly escaped us all.

Nathalie Lévy: You directed Gaspard Ulliel in It's Only the End of the World, and you wrote an intense message after the news of his death...
Xavier Dolan: It was really his light... the allure he had... He was someone who... I still can't talk about him... And I still can't accept... I dream of him at night... very often. Sometimes those dreams look cruel... or... hyper realistic. Some look so real... and when I wake up it's so painful.
Nathalie Lévy: What was so singular about Gaspard?
Xavier Dolan: I saw lots of interviews with Gaspard when he died. And he was someone who loved words... and loved to think. Sometimes he looked up at the sky, before speaking. And yet all of his words were relevant, measured, cultivated... He was a literate man, and curious. He spoke well. And he spoke when he had to speak.

I've been a fan from the first hour. Kate Winslet has inspired me to become an actor, a director, a costume designer ... she's helped me to grow as an artist and as a human being in a way that she will never know. When I saw her in Titanic, I was 8 years old. I saw the film and I was like, "Oooh, look at that." Big ideas, ambition, greater than life. It showed me that there were no limits to the things you could dream. I couldn't believe the production design. Do you know the accuracy and the rigor of the research James Cameron did for it? Down to the doorknobs. The accuracy of every detail is nothing short of autistic, and it's very impressive. But from the age of 8 to 16, Kate Winslet was the spokesperson of my teenage-hood without ever knowing it. She's been the face of my wildest artistic dreams. The way she walked, the way she talked ... she's defined the person that I am in so many aspects. And I know that it's extremely weird to be talking about this. Some artists do that to you. For me, it was her.