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<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=140 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <IMG SRC="23072d10.jpg" border=0 width="114" height="209" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <B>ELLE QUEBEC NOVEMBER 1993</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Elle Québec November 1993 </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="4813a3e0.jpg" border=0 width="314" height="318" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="2330f3f0.jpg" border=0 width="271" height="319" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis : The Beautiful Beast </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>He could well become the first cult actor that the Québécois cinema has ever known. While waiting for that he is satisfied with being the first sex symbol. Which, let us admit, is already not so bad …. Why him rather than anyone else? Our television is not, after all, short of really good looking guys who join us in </B></div> <div> <B>the intimacy of our living rooms week after week. But look, not one of them has succeeded in making us quiver like Ovila of les Filles de Caleb; since the famous ‘stallion scene’ of torrid memory, Roy Dupuis - no disrespect to him - dominates the top ten of our fantasies. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>First and foremost, it’s his way of acting - "physical, almost animal", say the critics, the directors, the actors who have shared scenes with him. "He says everything with his body even before he has spoken a single word," explains Sylvie Drapeau. It’s true that for the Number One of Québécois television series, "acting is a transfer of energy from the actor to the viewer. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Therefore everything must pass through the body. I don’t believe in the results of a method; an actor shouldn’t give the impression that he is performing.   Otherwise it’s heavy, it says, "did you see me?" This minimal acting is not, for all that, less sensual, in the manner of Marlon Brando with whom he can be compared. A comparison which only pleases Roy Dupuis, himself an enthusiastic fan: "He marked our whole generation. With Michel Simon and Gérard Philipe, he is my favourite actor." In fact, Dupuis is a descendant of the classic American heroes, hard on the outside, vulnerable inside. One whom you would suspect to have a self-assurance bordering on conceit, thinks of himself as shy, fragile and anxious. A little like the characters he presents on the small and big screens : Emilie’s Ovila,  the son in Cap Tourmente, the killer prostitute in Being at Home with Claude. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The craft of the actor is only seduction. "You must seduce constantly. And not only the public. All the interlocutors in the business; the directors, the journalists, the set technicians. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>A chief lighting technician or sound man who doesn’t like you can deal your image a serious blow." And if tomorrow the seduction machine ceases to work? If the telephone stops ringing? If having been carried to the clouds he is reduced to bread-and-butter roles? The Québécois are known for being great devourers of stars, ready to bring down one day those whom they adored the day before. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>But he about whom it is written that he remains "one of the rare local actors who could seriously hope to make a career abroad" is not one of those, quite the contrary. Since his graduation from the National Theatre School - which he entered by deceit, adopting the identity of a pupil who didn’t attend the auditions - his career has never suffered any down time. The theatrical world uncovered him in Le Chien by Jean-Marc Dalpé, then as Romeo in Roméo et Juliette, staged at the TNM, and finally in Un oiseau vivant dans la gueule which followed at the Théâtre de Quat’Sous.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The young actor "who radiates enormous energy," does them all. He follows up with two television series, Les Filles de Caleb and Scoop, and there he is, promoted to star status. In between he makes a film with Jean Beaudin adapted from the work of playwright René-Daniel Dubois. There are in Being at Home </B></div> <div> <B>with Claude certain sublime moments which prove that Roy Dupuis has the makings of true actor.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Released in San Francisco and London last spring, this film allowed him to reach a different audience. The French audience was able to discover him in Émilie, the hexagonal(?) version of Filles de Caleb. It seems that certain French directors are interested in our national Roy. But in the world of showbusiness, one doesn’t talk of these things so long as the contracts are not signed and sealed. Be that as it may, the filming of Scoop III was scarcely finished when Roy Dupuis took on the role of the brother "toaster thief" in the play True West by Sam Shepard; after four years’ absence he returned to the stage of the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, with all the risk that involved. But rising to challenges is part of his true nature. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Stage fright or sky-diving, he loves powerful sensations. Even more, he can’t live without them! This winter he becomes a vacuum-cleaner salesman in the Josée Fréchette film C’était le 12 du 12 et Chili avait les blues, "a responsible fellow, not a loser, someone who enjoys life, in contrast to the roles I’ve played up till now." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Nine films, ten plays, five series and instant success - in five years! All this has happened so quickly. Too quickly perhaps. To go from the anonymity of repertory theatre to the status of star almost overnight has a disorientating effect. "You become public property. No more privacy even in the street. The least of your movements is liable to criticism. An incident takes on the status of a mini scandal. You have to learn to censor yourself. To remain impassive when you would rather send an intruder packing. To change your habits, to become as discreet as possible." To preserve his personal integrity or to conform to the image the media portrays? It’s not easy for a rebel of the likes of Roy Dupuis to have to make those calculations. And one ends up paying with an identity crisis à la Woody Allen. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Indeed, if the last years have been a total success professionally, as far as his private life is concerned, on his own admission, he has been a little lost in the tortuous labyrinth of an obscure ego. He has recently emerged from that with the maturity that comes at thirty, and at the same time he has fallen in love. For the beautiful Roy is madly in love "for the second time in my life," he specifies. And since he is not one to do things by halves, he is committed up to the hilt in this relationship. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Without unbridled passion it’s not worth being a couple. I need her glance, her scent. I discover her endlessly, I marvel at her. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>She is my drug … I would do anything for her." Wow! And news for those women (and men) who saw our young leading man as detached, the warrior for whom the woman was only a passing relaxation. That’s not to say that he equates Love with Forever,  but he is capable of romantic extravagances which overturn the</B></div> <div> <B>heart of the lucky chosen ones. "I walked from Montreal to Sainte-Rose to see a girl << less than 20 miles if you were wondering >> One day I blew up 250 Mickey Mouse balloons and made a canopy over the bed to celebrate the reunion with my girlfriend who was returning from Florida …" On the other hand, he admits to being difficult to live with.  </B></div> <div> <B> </B></div> <div> <B>When you’ve spent 18 hours on a film set and given all you have, you get home completely empty, with an enormous, insatiable need for tenderness." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Need for tenderness? Who would have believed that? And little by little one realises that Roy Dupuis excels in the art of obscuring the trail. With his Mickey Rourke look - cowboy boots, impressive biceps and unshaven cheeks, one imagines him growing up on the tarmac of the great towns, a boyhood of</B></div> <div> <B>street brawls. Whereas he comes from a modest family from Amos,  his father a commercial traveller, his mother a piano teacher, server at Mass, first in  everything at school and in sports, darling of the nuns, an adolescence without revolt and as wholesome as possible, split between cello practice, studies and hockey. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Those who knew him tell that he is consumed by ambition; however he claims to having no career plan (his agent Hélène Mailloux takes care of that in all probability….), he denies himself any concessions, he takes what he wants from life and throwsaway the rest. Because he goes bowling, because he went from</B></div> <div> <B>a black Mustang to a white Harley Davidson, because he has the reputation of being a formidable centre in the Artists’ Union hockey team, it doesn’t make him a ‘macho man’ without substance. One can at the same time play the role of "the beautiful beast ??" and be intelligent. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>According to Michelle Rossignol, who was director at the time he studied at the National Theatre School, Roy Dupuis’ success is a mixture of talent, charisma and luck. And one could add: of perfect timing. He arrived in the nick of time to portray the seducer type in the post-feminist era. The Utopia of eternally harmonious relationships between the sexes achieved through standardisation of identities has petered out; the roles are differentiating once again.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>As women are re-feminising, men can allow themselves to come back to a sort of virile "brutality". For, maintains the sex symbol in question, "in the game of seduction at all times it’s the women who establish the rules. The men model their behaviour on their demands. This begins in infancy when the little boy applies himself to seducing his mother, trying his best to comply with her expectations. And it follows him all the way to adulthood."</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Although he fosters doubts in his innermost heart he will have a constant worry about not letting them be seen; it’s the affirmation of power without aggressiveness. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Now then, in 1993, exit the parts for the male on the path of domestication, the man bogged down in everyday problems including those of his marshy Self, the man with-all-his-weaknesses-declared. And let us welcome the return of the true male. Heroes without cause, but heroes all the same, in our cinematographic landscape.</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="234c0300.gif" border=0 width="192" height="48" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B><B><IMG SRC="235c1300.gif" border=0 width="193" height="48" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B><B><IMG SRC="235c1300.gif" border=0 width="193" height="48" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>T.V HEBDO DECEMBER 3, 1993                                   </B><A HREF="id100.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="T.V. Hebdo December 3, 1993"><U><B><IMG SRC="16b46230.jpg" border=0 width="70" height="35" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>