Handsome and shy like a Jeff Buckley or a Bernard-Marie Koltès, capable of setting the stage alight and of electrifying any programme by his mere presence, gifted with a disconcerting frailty, a wounded man who dares to show the sores and cracks, Roy Dupuis has become a magnetic pole of the Quebec stage and screen.  An icon who is aware of his attractiveness and the power that this confers. From his first appearance in Jean Beaudin’s feature film Being at Home with Claude, we knew that this actor was not for those who wanted to keep their emotions in check.  He took too many liberties for our temperature-controlled sensibilities, acted with too much force and shamelessness for our repressed bodies and souls.  The dazzling discovery of Roy Dupuis on the big screen allowed us to gain some ground, but also made us lose our grip.  For the first time in Quebec an actor exuded testosterone, stimulating a veritable media frenzy and intense feelings, a mixture of seduction and rejection.

Theatre directors, primarily Brigitte Haentjens, have developed a fondness for this creature who is able to recite nonsense or, like Sarah Kane, can express moments of unbearable gentleness and spellbinding violence.  Roy Dupuis revealed, through the works of Michel Marc Bouchard, Jean Marc Dalpé, Jeanne-Mance Delisle and Sam Shepard, the attraction of a moth for bare light bulbs, a particular liking for hostile environments, offering himself up for possible sacrifice.  Like Genet’s tightrope-walker, he has shown that he is capable of making us feel dizziness and the alluring fear of the unknown.  I understand that a French director moved heaven and earth to stage Genet’s Haute Surveillance with Roy in the role of Green Eyes, and abandoned the project when the actor decided to answer Jean Beaudin’s call to shoot the now mythical Filles de Caleb.  Already, on stage, you felt that the actor had to a great extent overcome the fear of the unknown and of falling; on the screen his image stamped itself on the collective subconscious, like a branding iron searing flesh.  Few debuts have been conducted with such passion and panache; there was more than enough reason to either adore or hate this actor who mumbled his lines, who radiated hormones, and who dared to venture where we will never go.  Such disquieting individualism was both fascinating and disconcerting.  Yet the unleashing of this Prometheus was only the beginning.

I recall meeting the actor the day after the American presidential elections.  His anger and indignation were intense.  Roy Dupuis, born in the land of mines and Richard Desjardins, loves America.  He feels a growing affinity with the founding nations; this aspect of the screenplays of Francis Leclerc’s Mémoires affectives and Robert Budreau’s neglected and underrated That Beautiful Somewhere resonated strongly with him.  Americanism is inscribed in his imagination and in his genetic code.  He loves and understands Les États-Unis d’Albert recreated by his friend André Forcier, but those religious fundamentalists, those obtuse Republicans whose minds are closed to anything that is different make him infuriated and bitter.  No such thing as a light-hearted conversation with Roy Dupuis, whether it’s about American politics, the stupidity of the media, or cronyism in film, theatre and life in general.  His opinions are ones to lose sleep over and sound like a call to order.  For there is an honesty about him, this enemy of Puritanism and pretence.  With a dislike of pretentiousness, sworn enemy of insincerity and corruption, Roy Dupuis stands apart from fashion trends, U-turns and calculated manoeuvring, and says that he uses this craft to express himself and to explore a part of himself.
“I need to know the material I’m going to work with and to consider the job to be important.  I need, on reading the script or the screenplay, to hear a strong and authentic voice.  The subject could be serious or light, the film commercial or from a so-called auteur - in any case I need to feel an authenticity, a truth.”
These words recur endlessly in his conversation; he never evades your eyes, his look strips you bare, he proves to be merciless with socialites, fixers and those who do not think much of this demanding trade, which consists of breathing life into the men and women that our imagination only glimpses.

Roy Dupuis is one of those people that the writer André Suarès calls “les grands vivants”; those for whom the feeling of existing is only enjoyed against a background of permanent risk.  He pushes the envelope.  All his theatrical roles, all his filmography including his most commercial productions, demonstrate that the principal philosophy is excess, where beauty and ugliness, good and bad taste no longer apply.   Roy Dupuis rises above these categorisations.  The intention is not to convert; you have the right to choose not to go there, to go elsewhere for more moderate entertainment. Therefore it’s conceivable to steer clear of his work just as you may choose to pass on Sean Penn or Anthony Hopkins.  But you need to know what you’re missing – a sort of wild vertigo, a compilation of extremes.