1991--1992 Articles

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=120 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <IMG SRC="44770c20.gif" border=0 width="112" height="194" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> 1991--1992 Articles</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <IMG SRC="12d04830.jpg" border=0 width="260" height="387" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">                  <IMG SRC="12f00830.jpg" border=0 width="256" height="387" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div>       <IMG SRC="1e718150.jpg" border=0 width="280" height="21" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="1e718150.jpg" border=0 width="280" height="21" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>CHATELEINE  AUGUST 1991</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis - the wildman is tamed </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis doesn’t give interviews to magazines, his agent announced; however, he does make exceptions, she added. Two days and an overseas call later, Roy, who was in Paris filming a French-Quebecois co-production Les Veufs (Entangled), agreed to make an exception. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The meeting place was L’Oeuf, a new bar as long as a railway track and as empty as a station after the train has left. The suggestion to meet here came from the party concerned, but I too would have proposed somewhere like this - just fashionable enough but not too modern, just well enough known but never too busy, matching the image I had of Roy Dupuis. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The place was deserted and Roy Dupuis, huddled in a dark corner, was as visible as a car in the blind-spot of a rear-view mirror. Sprawled on the bench in a battered leather jacket, he sipped a grapefruit juice, a pretty questionable choice for someone who likes to take a drink, if not several. During our first meeting I lost count of the number of Bloody Mary’s the beautiful Roy knocked back with frightening speed. Had he suddenly changed his habits? He greeted my question with a burst of laughter. No, he hadn’t changed his habits. Yes, he still liked alcohol just as much on special occasions, but he was entering an important period in his life and he preferred to get there ‘on an empty stomach’. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>What exactly was he referring to? The end of Filles de Caleb and the casting aside of the burden of Ovila which he has borne up to the airing of the last episode? The awards - Métrostar, the Golden Rose - that he has since received? The dozens of proposals that he gets every day or, more specifically, his role in the film adaptation of René-Daniel Dubois’ famous play Being at Home with Claude? </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis began to reply that it was all these at the same time. He suddenly changed his mind. What really mattered at this precise point in his life was, above all, the challenge of Being at Home with Claude where he plays, alongside Jacques Godin, a role already immortalised in the theatre by Lothaire Bluteau and Marc Béland. It was because of this difficult but coveted part that he was drinking grapefruit juice, doing boxing training and walking round Lafontaine Park late at night, the better to understand his character, a young homosexual who takes drugs, is a prostitute, and who kills the only man he has ever truly loved. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"For me it is above all a story of love and of the city," he says. "This is why I want to lose 20 - 25 pounds. My character doesn’t have the robustness of a country lad, he’s a town rat, unhealthy, on the edge of a nervous breakdown. This isn’t my world, except that I know the city, the life after dark, and I can well imagine the world of the character." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis would have grovelled to land this role. It wasn’t necessary. Jean Beaudin, the director, wanted him and no-one else. In the business the news was well received, although there was talk that Roy Dupuis didn’t deserve such a gift, and that anyway he was sure to fall flat on his face - the same face that opened all those amazing doors for him. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>I didn’t know how to ask the question, how to make him acknowledge that his handsome face was a double-edged weapon. To my astonishment he ventured into the area himself. "I have felt the jealousy for a long time," he said over the smoke of his cigarette. "Before Les Fillesde Caleb it was terrible. People said, ‘He gets work because of his looks’, others said, ‘He’s nothing but a tramp, he markets his face - everyone wants to employ him today, but it won’t last’." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>- And what did you reply to this? </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"What is there to reply?", he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I don’t know any more than anyone else what’s going to happen in the future." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>- But up till now you have delivered the goods just the same? </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Yes," he said, with a little smile in which there was a glimmer of defiance, indicating that not only was he capable of riding these blows without a word, but that he also took a malign pleasure in confounding the sceptics and shutting up those who are jealous and frustrated.   I had suddenly discovered another facet of his personality. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The general opinion that has made Roy Dupuis a James Dean of the Grand Nord, a Marlon Brando of Nouvelle France, seen as an icon of excess and irresponsibility, is on the wrong track. Roy Dupuis had a prepared speech on his real personality. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I was raised on competition," he offered, in a moment of silence. "My father wanted me to become a hockey player. He drove me very hard to be an achiever. I was in the Amos hockey club and then the swimming team. My mother found sport too violent. She wanted me to take music so, to make her happy, I studied the cello for seven years. When I took up something </B></div> <div> <B>I wanted to be the best, and most of the time I was. Even today it doesn’t really amuse me to play just for fun; there needs to be a goal, a challenge that I can surmount to prove …. to prove that I’m alive!" </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Hockey, swimming, cello, the childhood of Roy junior was not the most relaxing. This didn’t stop him clashing with the English and becoming a nationalist. Roy Dupuis remains a nationalist to the point where he refuses to speak English in Montreal. He revealed confidentially that he recently went to Toronto to record the English version of Les Filles de Caleb, and that Les Veufs was also filmed in Shakespeare’s mother-tongue, but that was off the record. It sounds like a sell-out. Now Roy Dupuis could be accused of all the faults in the world except that. Not a sell-out, nor an actor who sells himself. He never accepts a role </B></div> <div> <B>for the money, always for the challenge and the achievement. "Money’s important because I spend a lot. I like to go out, eat in good restaurants, treat my friends. Money takes care of the hassles, but I’m not the type to take a contract just for the cash." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Of course it’s a matter of integrity, but above all it’s a love of the art. One thing that Roy Dupuis is certain of is that he’s mad about this job which he chose by the greatest of chances. Roy had given up his psychology class in Cégep, had dabbled with music in a group, but still didn’t know what he was going to do in life. One day he went along to an audition at the National Theatre School with a friend to feed her her cues. Michelle Rossignol, then director of the school, heard him, and strongly advised him to try the stage. "Why not," he asked himself. "I often say that I didn’t choose this profession. That’s true, but today I wouldn’t do anything else in the world. I must say I have more respect for myself than before. I feel that I’m more sensible, and I like myself a little better. The more you are liked, the more you like yourself, that’s for sure." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>Roy Dupuis could have reacted badly to the success that hit him like a bolt from the blue.  It wasn’t in his nature or his temperament. He could also have taken advantage of his fame and behaved like a ‘star’, but he’s too shy or too ingenuous for such a personality switch. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"Being a public figure doesn’t really interest me. I’m first and foremost an actor and I like my job too much to waste my energy. That’s why I don’t like to do too many interviews, attend social gatherings, or endorse causes. I get a lot of invitations these days but I turn down three quarters of them unless they’re from friends." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>At 28, an age where most young male leads are either unemployed or waiting tables, Roy Dupuis can’t complain. Since graduating from the National School he has been courted equally by theatre, cinema and television and by representatives of Chrysler and Pepsi.    He genuinely has never known unemployment and scarcely any part-time jobs. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The National School prepares you well, he claims. For three years he worked with directors like René Richard Cyr and Yves Desgagnés, all well established in the business and all prepared to offer him a real part after graduating. He just forgets to stress that he was practically the only person in his class to have such a brilliant debut. Not because he’s modest - the opposite in fact - but he’s not the type to boast. In his case success came without warning, and he had no idea why. Suddenly one day everyone started looking at him differently as if he had undergone a divine transformation during the night. Roy Dupuis doesn’t want to disappoint them …. </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>"I have certain responsibilities," he says. "I have to live up to people’s expectations. That’s why I have to be on the go till 6 in the morning, but never when I’m filming…." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>When he’s filming, Roy Dupuis becomes a monk. He doesn’t go out, he goes to bed early,  and spends a lot of time day-dreaming. He doesn’t just enter into his character, he disappears. "It’s tough on my girlfriend," he jokes, "I always take these heavy characters home. She has to live with them too. Having said that, I don’t become unbearable. Just a little absent ….." </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>The bar has filled up without our noticing. Roy Dupuis orders a third juice. If he carries on at this rate he’ll turn into a grapefruit before midnight. While he’s waiting he decides to go and play a game of billiards with a friend. I bet that he’s going to let her win, pretending that he doesn’t know how to play. One day she’ll discover, like many others, that Roy Dupuis conceals his game well, and that, deep down, the thing that he does best in all the world is play (=act), and of course, win. </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="44533260.gif" border=0 width="307" height="38" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"><IMG SRC="44533260.gif" border=0 width="307" height="38" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#9900CC" FACE="Arial" ><B>ARTICLE ON LA PRESSE FEBRUARY 1992              </B></FONT><B>                                       </B><A HREF="id75.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="LA PRESSE FEB. 1992"><U><B><IMG SRC="135422c0.gif" border=0 width="66" height="44" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></U></A><B>      </B></div> <div> <B>                                                                                                      </B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>