Back in the apartment, Ms. Moore found a note on the computer. “He’s rambling and stuff,” she said, “but he thanks a couple of people, and he thanks Linda Wells. It’s really sweet.”

With tears streaming down her face during an interview in her apartment, she went on: “I understand the whole concept of — not that he committed suicide, but suicide took him. I know that he didn’t have a choice. Because it wasn’t him that did this. I know he would never dream of doing that and leaving us. And I know that.”

The Farewell

Julianne Moore was another movie star who made a beeline toward Mr. Slonim at red carpet events. Their relationship went back to the mid-1970s, when they were each other’s dates for a homecoming dance at J. E. B. Stuart High School in Falls Church, Va. On the rainy, dark afternoon of Dec. 18, Ms. Moore was among the roughly 350 mourners crowded into the Fourth Universalist Society church on Central Park West. Nearby sat Mr. Slonim’s wife and their sons.

Speakers included his two sisters, who recalled the Superman costume he wore as a boy; his brother-in-law, Dominic Moore, who described his generosity with the swag bags he picked up at parties; the Oscar-winning film producer Bruce Cohen, who reminisced about his days with Mr. Slonim in middle school, at Yale and on the red carpet; and the former Allure editor Ms. Wells, who spoke last.

“Jeffrey hit the red carpet and he loved it,” she said. “Which sounds hard to believe, now that the red carpet is so often a shouting match and a total fame orgy. But he did, and he respected it, too.”

After describing his amusing encounters with Roseanne Barr, George Clooney and Donald J. Trump, she continued: “You could tell he had a genuine connection with the subjects, many of whom made a ritual out of greeting him with a kiss. He gave as much time and attention to the Oscar winner as he did to the guy who was voted off ‘Survivor: Borneo.’”

A montage of still photographs projected onto a small movie screen gave glimpses of Mr. Slonim from babyhood to adulthood. After the clergyman said a few final words, the mourners stayed in place for a long moment, silent and not quite ready to leave.