At the Snack 'n Blues on St. Laurent Blvd., Roy Dupuis talks about his title role as a Montreal jazz pianist in Jack Paradise, which opens here Feb. 20
CREDIT: JOHN KENNEY, THE GAZETTE

The Quebec movie star, one of the few actors well-known here and abroad, is, in his own distinctive, soft-spoken way, trying to debunk the notion that he has returned to his Quebec roots over the past couple of years. Between puffs, he insists that he didn't consciously set out to refocus his energies on French-language Quebec work. His story - and he's sticking to it - is that it just turned out that way.
But whether he planned it or not, there's no denying that Dupuis is back chez nous. Call it le retour de Roy Dupuis. For several years, he virtually disappeared from French-language film and television, spending almost all of his time working in Toronto on the made-for-U.S.-cable series Nikita.
That stylish thriller turned Dupuis into a cult hero in the U.S., where he has a considerable fan base, including no small number of female admirers. One Web-based group of particularly fanatical Dupuis followers call themselves the Royettes.

But since Nikita bit the dust more than two years ago, Dupuis appears to have veered off the path leading to Hollywood and made a beeline for arty made-in-Quebec vehicles. He played the charming dreamer/lover Alexis in last year's mega-hit Séraphin: Un Homme et son péché, the top-grossing film in the history of Quebec cinema. He also memorably portrayed biker-gang tough guy Ross Desbiens in the two Last Chapter television miniseries.

Dupuis is also part of the star-studded cast of Denys Arcand's Oscar-nominated Les Invasions barbares, playing a wry narcotics cop who strikes up a strange relationship with Stéphane Rousseau's character. His scenes are among the most memorable in the film, which was re-released here yesterday. Next up, he'll be seen in the title role of the jazz-drenched musical drama Jack Paradise, Les nuits de Montréal, which opens on 60 screens across Quebec on Feb. 20.

But Dupuis is not buying for a second the notion that he's made any kind of conscious decision to shun Hollywood and English-language film in favour of homegrown Québécois fare. During our smoky bar encounter this week, Dupuis enthusiastically added to "la boucane" with his smelly French cigarettes and, with good humour, shot down my theory about "le retour de Roy."

First off, he noted that he recently starred in an English-language film, a low-budget picture titled Manners of Dying. Shot at a former women's prison in Quebec City last fall, the film, which is based on a short story by Life of Pi author Yann Martel, stars Dupuis as a prisoner on death row in the U.S.
He says he's working more here simply because he wanted to come home, to spend more time at his renovated 19th-century farmhouse just outside Montreal with his girlfriend (and fellow actor) Céline Bonnier.

"I wanted to return chez nous for a bit," he said. "Now if some Polish filmmakers come here to shoot, I'd be happy to work with them. It's not necessarily that I wanted to do more Québécois projects. But it is the language that I know the best. I know the subtleties of the language.

"But it all depends on the roles I'm offered. I've never calculated anything in my career. Scripts arrive, I read them, and, if I like them, I do them. It's the story; it's not whether it's in English or French."

One reason Dupuis has done so many English projects - including the 1995 sci-fi flick Screamers and the 1994 miniseries Million Dollar Babies - is that, unlike many of his colleagues here, he can do unaccented English. He originally hails from the Abitibi region, but he spent part of his childhood in Kapuskasing, Ont., which is where he first picked up his steady grasp of the language of Brando.
But it is harder for him to act in English, Dupuis says. "It does demand a little more concentration. I have to listen a little more closely. In Manners of Dying, they wanted an American accent and that took a little more work."

He recently turned down an offer to do a major British-U.S. series because the job would have entailed working abroad, in Africa, for nine months. He agreed to do Jack Paradise because he was fascinated by the character, not out of an overwhelming love of jazz.

In the film, from writer-director Gilles Noël, Dupuis plays Jacques Paradis, a kid from St. Henri who, at a young age, sneaks out to peer in the windows of jazz clubs. The film is set in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, when Montreal hummed with live jazz and, by the time he's an adult, Jacques Paradis has bloomed into Jack Paradise, one of the town's top piano players.

It's part social history, part tale of a musician obsessed with his art at the expense of everything - and everyone - around him. The original score comes courtesy of seasoned local jazz composer James Gelfand, and the music plays a central role.

"All that matters to Jack is jazz," Dupuis said. "There are all kinds of social changes going on around him, but they don't affect him. He tries to create a normal life but the jazz keeps coming back to get him."
Dupuis is known for his intense approach to his craft, so it's not surprising to hear him say that all artists, whether actors or jazz musicians, are consumed by the same sort of passion.

"You feel the most alive when you're creating," Dupuis said. "Of course, it's possible to balance your personal life and art. In fact, for an actor, you have to live and do other things than acting in order to better express yourself as an actor."

Though he makes some nifty piano moves in Jack Paradise, Dupuis admits he can't play. His mother, a piano teacher, tried to start him on the piano at the age of 3, but he didn't take to it. Instead he picked up the cello as a child, but he dropped it when the family moved to Kapuskasing - they couldn't find a cello teacher there. At age 12, Dupuis was happy to miss after-school music lessons, but he now says "it's one of the frustrations of my life that I didn't keep playing."

In Jack Paradise, though he doesn't really play the piano, he was determined to make it look as real as possible. He had the movements of the pianist recording the score videotaped and, the night before shooting, he studied the tapes to make sure he put his hands on the right keys at the right time.

For a guy who says he's not giving priority to French-language Quebec films, he sure has a lot of them on the go. He is currently shooting Mémoires affectives, the second feature from Francis Leclerc, and, immediately after that wraps early next month, he moves on to Marc-André Forcier's Les États-Unis d'Albert.

Jack Paradise, Les nuits de Montréal opens here Feb. 20.