Opening scene shows Roy talking in a sunny room in his farmhouse…

Roy: I need to work on a character before presenting it. I am like that a bit in real life too. That’s why I have difficulty with talk shows – they’re so fast-paced! I prefer to work on a subject - the material, the character – before presenting it.

Host: …To reflect on the subject?

Roy: Yes, more in depth.

Voiceover: (while Roy emerges from his farm house and walks through the woods)
Roy Dupuis is a man of few words, discreet, shy (he says) but never timid or retiring. Ever since he came on the scene he has been unforgettable. He has become one of the greatest actors of his generation. Away from the noise of the city we find him in his hide-a-way near Montreal. This “little paradise” is a sanctuary where the actor, too suddenly thrust into stardom, found the peace necessary for working on his many different roles. A world of silence, which strangely resembles the countryside that formed the character he played which changed his life forever.

H: Is it good luck or a curse – the time of the sudden success?

R: Certainly happiness to be so well known…

H: Overnight!

R: Yes, but you feel sick to your stomach as well, to think that over 80% of the population watched! After that, any meeting I had with people was distorted. People weren’t as relaxed or natural with me so I lost that as a source of information for me.

H: How did you handle it?

R: I couldn’t handle it – so I drank. I’d go out at night. I admit I was shy when anyone approached …so I drank.

H: You didn’t drink before?

R: Well, alcohol was a problem before but this amplified the problem. Then it got dangerous… and drugs entered the picture.

H: Lots of drugs?

R: Yeah, when I wasn’t filming, it happened every night! Now - never. I will have a glass of wine now and then but… never to the point of intoxication. I hate that feeling.

H: You said with the sudden shock of stardom brought on by Les Filles de Caleb: “I engaged in a total spiral of self-destruction.” So, even though LFDC was a great success, it also had a great destructive effect on you?

R: It wasn’t just LFDC, it was my nature…

H: Like what?

R: My childhood, the models (examples) that I had. Part of the behavior was definitely curiosity. I had been a very disciplined child – hockey every morning, swimming a lot. My father was very authoritarian. I had things to discover, you understand. I had had a childhood completely the opposite (to that).

Voiceover: (while photographs from Roy’s childhood are shown.)

The childhood of Roy Dupuis was a dark zone, which he chose to revisit with the assistance of a psychoanalyst - but he keeps the details to himself. The resultant fragility he has explored with his great acting talents.

“He is a profoundly wounded man.” The Director, Jean Beaudin, said of the actor.

“He had a hard time of it too young.”

With a father who wanted to make him a hockey star and a piano teacher mother, who wanted him to practise his cello, the child was torn but remained always competitive – a character trait perfect for an actor.

R: My father was a traveling salesman who was only able to be home one day a week. Then came the day, after he left, my mother said – “Pack up, we’re moving!” We chose what furniture we could take and loaded the truck. Before we were to leave, I took one last ride around the neighborhood on my bike.  I imagined my father coming back home…

H: … To an empty house…

R: Yes, empty of us…that was hard but…(he smiles) on the other hand, at fourteen years old, having lived in Kapuskasing (a small northern Ontario town) – to move to Laval! (part of Montreal)…

H: …To be in a city!

R: I looked around. I went down into the Metro (subway system)…so; the pain of missing my father was eventually replaced by discovering the city.

H: I remember reading that you said: “At some point I discovered that my brain had forgotten things – a lot of things.” You were referring to your childhood?

R: Yes, that’s what was fascinating to me, when in psychoanalysis, there was something enormous that had happened and I had completely forgotten it – totally!

H: Like Memoires Affectives?

R: Well, yes, exactly.

H: A person who couldn’t remember that he’d killed his father and had completely run away from the memories…

R: …And the story influenced me not to quit (the psychoanalysis). The more you don’t forget, the more you can learn about yourself.

H: It fascinates you still.

R: Yes, it’s good, it’s important to do the work, to go over the memories, because it helps you know who you are – where you belong and where you don’t belong. And…how we were born – how to live with it. The obstacles don’t change really, but to learn to accept them, in a certain way, is to learn to get along with our “different colors”: our dark side, our gloomy side, our lighter side. To normalize one’s space, to channel energy to get out of the s**t, to get out of something negative, to arrive at the positive, to be creative.

H: Do all the characters you portray (…and I think your answer may be “no”…) have to resemble you – or, is there always something that you need to find - one thing in the package that makes up that character, that you must find to create that person?

R: Well, there’s almost always some part there…(*garbled, they are both speaking at once*) Yes, my character brings me somewhere else. I make a facsimile of their experience; I must, to create that role. There are limits, for example: I did not experience the atrocities that General Dallaire saw, the defeat he felt but…I met the man, he shared his experience, and I soaked it up.  I absorbed his experiences, his universe, his reality. The reality of the person must be authentic. The authenticity is what interests me more.

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Roy & Family; first picture of Roy's dad!

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