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The photographer for this session was Carl Lessard.  “It was the first time that I’d worked with these famous artistes, and it gave me great pleasure.  Two totally different experiences: Ginette Reno, very funny and expressive,  filling the whole space.  I wanted to show her as an ultra feminine image. As for Céline Bonnier who was more introverted, I needed to bring out the intrinsic aspects of her personality – one smiling side full of kindness and another more internal, mysterious side.”  Mission accomplished.

Céline’s wardrobe credits from top to bottom:
Red dress – Hugo Boss
Black dress – Dolce & Gabbana
Blue top – Vanessa Bruno

~ Completely spontaneous ~

I dream of acting with Isabelle Huppert; she’s precise, sound, extraordinary!  And for a male partner, Gabriel Arcand.

My favourite designer? Christian Lacroix.  What he does is luxuriant, gorgeous and rock ‘n roll.

My friend the actor Benoît Gouin loves me because I think he’s hilarious.  I laugh at all of his jokes without exception!

My parents are 83 and they still take hands crossing the road.  They’re my models; I find it touching.

She shares the billing with Ginette Reno in Le Secret de ma mère, campaigns for forests and rivers, hates the dictates of fashion, thinks that publishing trivia is a huge waste of paper, and fervently believes that “you can’t have it all …” .  An interview with a real girl. 

“Céline does not draw attention to herself, but her presence is always apparent and greatly appreciated.  She successfully completes everything she undertakes, calmly and independently.”   Thus is Céline Bonnier described in … the roll of graduates from the Lévis Convent.  Céline was sixteen.  Now she is forty.  She hasn’t changed. 

Behind the countless roles of hard cases, whores and  losers that the actress has taken on (as in the TV series Tag and the film Monica la mitraille, or the recent Délivrez-moi), there lies concealed a composed woman who likes to begin her sentences with elegant turns of phrase such as “It is true that …”, and who, before choosing the stage, studied the transverse flute.  Whether she likes it or not, Céline Bonnier is well bred. 

“She was very outgoing,” recalls Céline Potvin, who taught her music at the convent,  “with a provocative side; she spent her whole time at secondary school with a bowler hat on her head.”  

As a performer she’s not easy.  She knows what she wants and she knows her worth.  She also has a reputation for never accepting a role without understanding “the how and why” from the start.  However, for Le Secret de ma mère, a film which interweaves family, love and father-daughter relations and where she shares top billing with Ginette Reno, she had no hesitation. “Elles étaient cinq, director Ghyslaine Côté’s previous feature film, made an impression on me.  It’s rare for me to work with a woman, and that interested me.  Women have different things to say.  We don’t yet have much clout in the film industry.”  Is she a feminist?  “If you like.”  Intelligent, certainly.  And wary.  “I’m very slow. I need to go into details to explain my views properly.  An interview is short.  Ideas can become clichéd.  It’s all so sensitive …”  

It takes more than 15 minutes before she decides to drop her armour, the opaque sunglasses (despite the shade on the terrace where we are sitting) which conceal her blue/green eyes.  Indeed, for Céline Bonnier, an interview consists of a lot of areas that she refuses to venture into; her relationship with Roy Dupuis and, on a wider scale, whatever she regards as personal territory.  “I have no problem talking about my vision or my art.  As for the rest, I think it’s a great waste of trees to write things that are useless, that no-one looks at.” 

All the same,  I hazard a vaguely intimate question. In Le Secret de ma mère, did the character played by Ginette Reno remind you of your own mother?  “It never crossed my mind.”  Full stop, new paragraph.  On the other hand, she didn’t have to be asked twice to talk about her co-star.  “Ginette and I had already worked together twelve years ago on Million Dollar Babies.  And I will never forget her performance in Léolo. She has a powerful voice for singing and also for acting.  I think she’s … I was going to say generous.  But it’s something else; when she begins to act she opens up.  You feel you’re being warmed, like you’ve been wrapped in a woollen blanket.  I love this actress.” 

Céline Bonnier is as petite (5’3”, 110lbs) as her characters are gigantic.  Her pale green leather coat contrasts sharply with her tousled red/brown hair (“the hairdresser, very little to do with me”).  Her skin is make-up free, her mouth uncompromisingly sensual.  In this face there coexists something raw and something very tender, blending into a strange appeal, allowing her to become both the resigned mother in Million Dollar Babies and the weird twins Denise and Dora in the TV series Grande Ourse.  Above all, she’s got what it takes.  And an unashamed talent.  “The most gifted actress of her generation” according to many.  Witness the string of prizes and nominations – for film, stage and TV – which she has built up since leaving the Quebec Conservatory in 1987, and all her leading roles with theatre companies Trident, Théâtre Repère, and with Robert Lepage (who was responsible for her moving to Montreal).  Amongst her trophies gleams the 2005 Best Actress Masque for her brilliant solo performance in La Cloche de verre.  

Céline Bonnier is a plain speaker.  Straight and to the point, but without any animosity.  “Contrary to what you might imagine, I’m a softie,” she explains between mouthfuls of green tea.  “I even have difficulty holding my ground when I’m confronted.  A softie who likes things tough and sleazy.” 

She laughs … a rare sound during the interview.  “I have great difficulty acting exuberance.  I’m much better at playing people who are in deep trouble and are struggling to have their little patch of grass in the sun.  This evolution of life appeals to me,  it’s nice.” 

Neither does she smile often in photos.  “For a long time I had a hang-up about my prominent teeth.  These days it’s better, but I always find it difficult to smile on command.  I’m not a genius.  Other people manage it wonderfully.  Not me.  What can you do?  As the saying goes, you can’t have it all.” 

And yet she has a lot.  But she would still like more.  “I draw and paint, but I would like to take a proper course.  I cook, but I lack a lot of the skills.  I sew, but it’s by instinct.  I do a lot of things, but I just dabble.  I muddle through and it wears me out.” 

Céline Bonnier’s comments exude high standards, for others, but especially for herself.  No matter that in 2002 the Quebec Association of Theatre Critics (AQCT) awarded her a special prize for ‘her commitment, her thoroughness and her versatility’,  she would rather grade herself ‘could do better’.  “Sometimes I watch myself on film and think, “Hmm … no, too restrained, too minimalist. I would love to be more daring, to be wilder …” 

Don’t interpret these comments as false modesty.  The actress doesn’t play that game.  “I inherited something precious from my parents – simplicity.  My occupation is fantastic but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world.  There’s more to life.” 

Silence … “It’s possible that one day things won’t work out for me any more,” she continues.  “What will I do then?  I have to think about it.”  Another silence … “For the moment, everything’s going very well. But you know how it is, we grow older quicker than men in this job.  Sorry, but it’s more difficult for us.   From time to time this fear returns …  Actually, I try to be quite a happy person, but I have a melancholy personality.” 

Céline prefers the dark to the sunny side of life.  “Death fascinates me,” she says.  It’s true that she suffered the sudden loss of a brother in her early years.  “There was that,” she says, “but my interest is a lot deeper.  There’s nothing morbid about this fascination; it’s the unknown, the inevitable that attracts me.  I love the artists who flirted with this subject like Egon Schiele, who was haunted by suicide.  Death is the only thing that you can never control.” 

Céline Bonnier is getting ready to plunge once again into this dark side.  In 2007 she will present her second work on the theme of bereavement (some years ago she co-wrote La fête des morts for Momentum).  “I’m interested in what it triggers off in the human body, in a family.  In life, basically.” 

Did this attraction for emptiness, this rage that breaks through onto the screen arise from a tortured past?  Not a bit of it.  The youngest of nine children grew up quietly in Saint-David de l’Auberivière on the South River, Quebec, with a sympathetic mother, a father who was a civil servant in the Ministry of Transport, in a united family.  “So normal it was unusual!  Our family wasn’t dysfunctional.  That was a rarity!  Even today I get enormous happiness when we’re all together.  We’re bound by a mysterious link.  It’s inexplicable.” 

To press the point: What if this rebellion that she spits out onto the screen is no more than a delayed adolescent crisis?  This ‘pop psychology’ analysis amuses and intrigues her … “I’ve never thought of that but, you know, it could be right.”  This time she laughs heartily.  And supports the theory! 

That said, there are many things in life that she condemns.  Capitalism that has been corroded, the insincerity of politicians, all these offend her.  “As soon as someone comes to power, he loses his humanity.  That’s shocking.” 

An anarchist, no; in contention, yes.  With the indiscriminate felling of forests, for example, taking part in an awareness-raising evening with Richard Desjardins (L’erreur boréale). And with the development of water courses for electricity production,  being godmother of a river for the Rivers Foundation, co-founded by Roy Dupuis.  When the subject is brought up, she loses her temper.  “What I don’t get is why artistes should keep quiet because they don’t know anything.  We are surrounded by experts!  But above all we are citizens like everybody else and we have a right to speak.  We live in a democracy, yes or no?” 

To conventions, strictures, conformity, Céline Bonnier says no thank you.  It’s the source of her rebellion against the dictates of fashion and dressing to order. “In The Mask I had to wear a suit and have my hair shampooed and set every morning.  I really suffered.” 

When told that her very personal sense of style, colourful and zany, is the envy of many, she seems surprised.  “Really?  I began at an early age rummaging though my brothers’ old clothes, and mixing them all up.  I love putting odd things together.  Look at this – I’m wearing this camisole with a little beaded granny cardigan.  It’s nothing special, but it’s perfect.  Every morning I take time to choose something that suits me.  Sometimes it takes a while and that’s a chore!  A real girl, basically …” 

She could have been a musician, she became an actress.  But her real dream was something else.  “I’m jealous of Riopelle and his partner, Joan Mitchell.  I too would have liked to have been a great, crazy painter.  To be extreme, to be ‘over the top’.  ‘Over the top’ all the time.  I’m not that.  At times I’m impassioned, other times passive, sometimes giving orders, sometimes being compliant; I’m always one or the other. Frankly, sometimes I think I’m dull.” 

She empties her cup and continues, “Sometimes, too, I look at myself in the mirror and think, ‘Oh dear, Céline, you’re 40 years old and your youth is long gone!’  But I can’t see the day when I’ll step into the adult world.  That’s the way I’m made.  And it’s fine by me.” 

Somewhere Céline Bonnier still has her bowler hat screwed onto her head.  As an act of defiance. 

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