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Roy Dupuis Profile |
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Birth Date: April 21, 1963
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Birth Place: New Liskeard, Ontario, Canada
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Birth Name: Roy Dupuis
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Height: 5'11"
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Biography |
Roy Dupuis (April 21, 1963) is a French-Canadian (Québécois)
actor. Internationally, he is renowned for his role as
counter-terrorism operative Michael Samuelle in the
television series La Femme Nikita.
Roy Dupuis was born in New Liskeard, Ontario to parents of
Franco-Ontarian and Québécois descent. From early infancy
until he was eleven years old, Roy Dupuis lived in Amos,
Abitibi, Québec. The next three years he lived in
Kapuskasing, Ontario, where he learned to speak English. His
father was a traveling salesman for Canada Packers; his
mother is a piano teacher. He has a younger brother and an
older sister. When he was fourteen, after his parents
divorced, his mother moved the family to Sainte-Rose, Laval,
Québec, where he finished high school. After high school, he
studied acting in Montréal, at the National Theatre School
of Canada (L'École nationale de théâtre du Canada), from
which he was graduated in 1986.
He lives southeast of Montréal, on 50 acres (200,000 m²) of
land in an 1840 farmhouse which he bought in 1996 and has
restored and renovated. Sports in which he has participated
include hockey, sky-diving, and golf. His hobbies include
astronomy and physics (his interests in high school). He
learned to play the cello as a boy and, at times, still
plays, sometimes in dramatic roles. In preparing his role in
the film Jack Paradise (2004), Dupuis learned very precise
jazz piano hand movements accompanying the actual piano
playing (performed on the movie sound track by pianist James
Gelfand, the composer of the original music). For the past
few years, between television and film projects, he has been
occupied with learning to sail; he owns a couple of
sailboats, and he is custom-outfitting the larger
aluminum-keeled vessel in preparation for extended ocean
voyages.
While becoming an accomplished actor in Québec and
well-known in some of the rest of Canada, Dupuis performed
in many theater productions, movies, and television series.
Among the stage roles that he has performed so far are: Luc
in Michel-Marc Bouchard's Les Muses orphelines (The Orphan
Muses), directed by André Brassard in 1985; Roméo in a
Québécois adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and
Juliet (Roméo et Juliette), directed by Guillermo de Andrea
in 1989; and Jay in Jean-Marc Dalpé's Le Chien (The Dog),
Adrien in Jeanne-Mance Delisle's Un Oiseau vivant dans la
gueule (A Live Bird in Its Jaws), and Lee in a Québécois
version of Sam Shepard's True West, all three productions
directed by Brigitte Haentjens, in 1987-89, 1990, and 1994,
respectively.
Roy Dupuis gained national celebrity virtually overnight as
Ovila Pronovost in the "télésérie Québécoise" Les Filles de
Caleb (also known as Emilie) when it premiered on Radio
Canada (1990-92), and he co-starred as the journalist Michel
Gagné in four seasons of Scoop (1991-95). He was introduced
to the American public on television as Oliva Dionne in
Million Dollar Babies (1994)--Les jumelles Dionne: La
véritable histoire tragique des quintuplées Dionne (The
Dionne "Twins": The True Tragic Story of the Dionne
Quintuplets). In the United States, he also debuted on the
big screen in such film roles as Becker in Screamers (1995)
and as John Strauss in Bleeders (1996), also known as
Hemoglobin (1997) in the UK. In 1997 he began appearing as
Michael Samuelle in the television series La Femme Nikita,
also known as Nikita. Recently, he won a MetroStar Award for
his role as Ross Desbiens in Le Dernier Chapitre: La
Vengeance (2003), the sequel to Le Dernier Chapitre (2002),
both filmed simultaneously in dual-language versions
broadcast in French and English on Radio-Canada and the CBC,
respectively.
Roy Dupuis's first appearance on film was in a 1987 short
experimental work inspired by the 1926 avant-garde film
Anémique Cinéma, by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, featuring
the same title.
Among Roy Dupuis' "tour-de-force" film performances are:
Yves, in Being At Home with Claude (1991; Cannes, Un Certain
Regard 1992)--his first major screen role--directed by Jean
Beaudin, adapted from a screenplay by Johanne Boisvert based
on the 1986 stage play by René-Daniel Dubois; and Kevin
Barlow, in Manners of Dying (2004), the first feature film
directed by Jeremy Peter Allen, adapted from his own
screenplay based on the short story first published in the
1993 collection The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios
and Other Stories by Yann Martel. His performance as
Alexandre Tourneur in Mémoires affectives (2004), directed
by Francis Leclerc, who co-wrote the screenplay with Marcel
Beaulieu, has recently received awards.
In Maurice Richard (The Rocket), directed by Charles Binamé
(Séraphin: un homme et son péché) and released in late
November 2005, Roy Dupuis stars as French-Canadian ice
hockey icon Maurice "Rocket" Richard, who played for the
Montréal Canadiens from 1942 to 1960 and whom he portrayed
previously on Canadian television in 1997 and 1999. Dupuis'
own experience playing hockey and his ability to perform on
the ice on authentic period hockey skates were useful for
this film, in which several professional hockey players were
cast in supporting roles. The film was nominated for the
Jutra Award 2006 in fourteen categories, including Dupuis
for Best Actor, but he did not win it. Leading the
nominations for a Genie Award in thirteen categories, it won
nine of the twenty-two awards on the night of Tuesday, 13
February 2007, at the Carlu Event Theatre in Toronto,
Canada, including Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading
Role for Roy Dupuis.
In December 2005, Roy Dupuis completed filming That
Beautiful Somewhere, based on the 1992 novel Loon, by Bill
Plumstead its executive producer, and both set and filmed on
location in North Bay, Ontario. The film, directed by Robert
Budreau, is produced by Lumanity Productions. Its world
première was on August 26, 2006, at the Montreal World Film
Festival (24 August to September 4, 2006); it will also be
presented at Cinéfest Sudbury: International Film Festival
(16-24 Sept. 2006), the Calgary International Film Festival
(September 22-October 1, 2006), and other film festivals, as
well as broadcast on Canadian pay cable television.
On location in Kigali, Rwanda, in mid-June 2006, Roy Dupuis
began filming the dramatic feature film "Shake Hands with
the Devil," in which he performs the principal role of
Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, head of the United
Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the
Rwandan Genocide. The film is based on Dallaire's
autobiographical book Shake Hands with the Devil: The
Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. After two months in Kigali,
filming continued in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in August 2006.
This film is slated for release in fall 2007.
In October 2006, along with Gabriel Byrne, Christopher
Plummer, Max von Sydow, and Susan Sarandon, Roy Dupuis
performed in the upcoming Canadian film "Emotional
Arithmetic". Directed by Paolo Barzman, the film was adapted
by Barzman and Jefferson Lewis from the novel by Canadian
writer Matt Cohen (1942-1999), who had written several
drafts of a screeplay adaptation himself before his death.
Dupuis plays Benjamin Winters, the "embittered" son of
Melanie Lansing Winters (Sarandon) and her husband, David
Winters (Plummer).
Also in October 2006, Le Journal de Montréal announced that
Dupuis would be the leading actor in Nirvana, the next
television series of director Patrice Sauvé, to be broadcast
on Radio-Canada in January 2008.
In February 2007, he took part in the improvisational short
film directed by Francis Leclerc, entitled Revenir
("Return"), conceived, filmed, and screened during the 11th
edition of Festival Regard, a festival of short films, held
in Saguenay, Quebec.
Roy Dupuis is starring in the film "Truffe" ("Truffle")
under the direction of Kim Nguyen; it will be produced by
Renée Gosselin and distributed by Christal Films. Roy Dupuis
has been cast for another film to be distributed by Christal
Films, entitled "Timekeeper."
In 2008 he plans to return to the stage in Blasted, the
controversial first play by British playwright Sarah Kane
(1971-1999). |
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Other Information |
Hobby: Sailing
Uses his abilities on the ice in starring as Maurice
"Rocket" Richard in the film directed by Charles Binamé.
[2005]
Bought a second-hand sailing boat and is rebuilding it to
make it sea-worthy. He is taking lessons in navigation and
plans some extensive voyages in it. [2005]
Bought an 1840s farmhouse in the Quebec countryside, which
he has been restoring and renovating over the past several
years.
Bears a strong resemblance to NHL superstar Maurice Richard.
Prior to his portrayal of "The Rocket," in the 2005 film, he
was featured in a Canadian TV commercial and TV biography
portraying "The Rocket" (1999).
He won a Genie award for his role of Alexandre Tourneur in
Mémoires affectives (2004).
Was approached by Jon Cassar to play a part in the fifth
season of 24. He declined doing so.
Was approached for a leading role in an American TV series,
after the completion of La Femme Nikita (TV series); but he
declined it because he wanted to return home (from Toronto,
Ont.) to Québec. (The title of the series is not public
knowledge.) |
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