His role in La Femme Nikita made him an international star. Now he’s come back to us with dreams of a family and two new characters which will make the small and big screens explode.

By André Ducharme

## with points of clarification by Roy Dupuis (see footnotes)

You may question his acting ability if you wish, but as far as his charisma is concerned, there’s none better. He has the registered pattern. The camera loves him, he seems to tell it, "Come closer, you will see what you will see." He organises the space with a couple of movements, he fixes his gaze like nobody else can. The public (generally speaking, women) fall under his spell. It’s all down to Ovila (Les Filles de Caleb) who is still in the public consciousness even after twelve years. The sudden success of the TV series (80% of Quebeckers riveted to their seats) hoisted Ovila Pronovost’s creator to stardom at 26. Female viewers, who had seen him totally naked in the arms of Emilie (Marina Orsini, she didn’t need any sympathy!) praised God for his beautiful buttocks, so much so that Rock et Belles Oreilles <<footnote (i)>> in a parody called "Les Filles de Calèche" << a calèche is a horse-drawn carriage >> poked fun at his dick. The price of fame.

He doesn’t do publicity, he gives interviews in homeopathic doses, he avoids premieres. He is shy, with a touchy sort of pride, a bit rustic, and very well off financially. He knows what he is capable of, and doesn’t suffer from self-modesty which is good to hear. He has an agent in Los Angeles, dreams of filming with Jim Jarmusch (Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai) and Terry Gilliam (12 Monkeys) and of playing roles like Denis Lavant’s (Alex the tramp) in Les Amants du Pont-Neuf by French director Leos Carax.

Fame upsets him, makes him shy in company, distorts his encounters with people. He struggles to cope with the changes of behaviour that success brings, never speaks ill of his friends – and doesn’t even think it! – and has no protection against malicious gossip and criticism.

There have been rumours that he was big-headed, unapproachable, not very bright, and that he spoke as though he had a mouthful of breadcrumbs. (At the Soirée des Masques, the theatrical Oscars, in 1994, he gave a speech from Cyrano de Bergerac with perfect diction. It was his revenge on his detractors.

Roy Dupuis met me in the kitchen at Premier Rôle, the agency that represents him. No question of his appearing in a public place, where he would have been completely mobbed. So he toys with a pizza in its box and drinks from a bottle of gently fizzy Brio. He has been up since the small hours as required by the filming of Un Homme et son Péché (due for release in December 2002), but his charm is fully switched on.

He is handsome, unpolished, masculine. A sweater worn next to the skin, brown hair artfully ruffled, several days’ beard growth and an old pair of jeans frayed over his trainers. He has the strong legs of a man of the soil, arms for comforting and surprisingly small hands for his build.

He doesn’t say, like many actors, "I’m a sensitive guy" while flexing his biceps, but rather, "What scares me most in all the world is talking about myself." So he smokes like a chimney to compose himself, relighting the cigarette butts. He is poised between tension and relaxation, his eyes changing from grey to blue and then to green.

His pals speak highly of him. "He’s a faithful friend, solid as a tree stump, generous as d’Artagnan." This doesn’t stop them indulging in some friendly banter: "He’s as stubborn as a mule, competitive, ‘Mr Know-It-All’, and just a tiny bit jealous."

"He walks into a room and everybody starts to stutter," says director Brigitte Haentjens with a laugh. "He was born with this ability to attract and as it says in the Bible, when you’re born with talent you reap the benefit!" Even before he was famous, actor Norman Helms recalls, in a bar or a restaurant every eye would be drawn to him. "It’s called presence, and you can’t learn it at school. But it’s gold for an actor," intones Richard Roy who has just directed him in the TV series Le Dernier Chapitre, where he plays a biker operating in the world of organised crime (to be broadcast in French and English on Radio-Canada in March.)

Before answering the simplest of questions - "What song do you whistle in the shower?" – Roy Dupuis concentrates as if his life depended on it. It takes thirty seconds for him to reply; he stares at the ceiling, looks at himself, looks at you (do I have a stain on my shirt?), then he comes out with "The theme from The Godfather". "What upsets me in this business," he tells us, "is that you can’t always speak the truth. You’ve only to think of the people who have just praised you in the dressing room at the end of a show and who leave saying, "Yeah, it wasn’t that good"."

The word ‘truth’ pops up often in the conversation. Paradox: he wants to speak the truth but at the same time tries not to give everything away. Astutely managing his image, he keeps a good distance between sincerity and stratagem. He tackles intimate topics with candour – his psychoanalysis, his phase of self-help (more of this to follow) but he keeps others locked away. His love life? He’s like a miser with his money box – hands off!

"Becoming famous has given me a sense of propriety, has brought pressure and responsibilities, which have made me begin to look at myself and want to take pride in myself." He turns down some 60 projects per year, across all sectors of the media. He gets offered every virile, heroic and charismatic part that has ever been written. He has turned down several invitations to play, in the theatre, Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar named Desire, immortalised in the cinema by a wet T-shirt named Marlon Brando. Roy apologises as if he has just thrown an apple core on the carpet. "Too predictable. There’s too much expected of me in that role."

"That shows his interest in being drawn to other types of characters exactly opposite to the image people have of him," thinks Céline Bonnier, who has known him since the filming of Million Dollar Babies in 1994. "I would love to see him trying someone ugly, or a weak person full of faults who hasn’t got a bulging chest."

In the theatre where he hasn’t appeared since True West (1994) – he played a not very bright toaster thief – he owes his best performances to Brigitte Haentjens. "What he likes is to be part of the creative process," she maintains. "He prefers the work of the rehearsals to the performance itself. He throws himself unceremoniously into places that most actors wouldn’t dare to go. I don’t give a damn that he’s a star. I would still expect his utmost."

He has already giver her it. In Le Chien (1987) by Jean-Marc Dalpé for example. A wandering son returns home to settle a score with his hostile father. The subject, we shall see, touches a very sensitive chord.

If it’s true that in the theatre (where he hopes to return this year in a new play), he doesn’t hesitate to grab hold of enigmatic, not to say perverse roles, the characters he takes on in TV and cinema are more unequivocal on the psychological level: a journalist in Scoop, a nasty alien in Screamers, a heterosexual pretending to be homosexual in J’en Suis, and Rocket himself in Maurice Richard: Histoire d’un Canadien.

Of his achievements, one role absolves all the others: Yves the homosexual murderer in Being At Home With Claude (1991) by René-Daniel Dubois, filmed by Jean Beaudin. He was feral, free-spirited, amazingly authentic. "I didn’t make love to my girlfriend once during the month and a half of filming. My libido was zero. Which just goes to show how a character affects your life."

And other people’s. The film, which was presented at several festivals, attracted praise from the press and love letters from men who thought he was homosexual. For credibility he immersed himself in the character, in the manner of Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro, leading a survey into gay territory. He explains without internal contortions and histrionics : "A good character, as far as I’m concerned, is one who is in a good story that transports me."

"Since he wants to do justice to his character," says Richard Roy, "he will call into question anything that seems to him to fail his internal logic, he’ll challenge an intent, draw attention to a prop he thinks is inappropriate, etc. but he does it with respect for everyone else’s work."

According to Charles Binamé, who chose him to play Alexis Labranche the lady-killer – particularly as far as Donalda is concerned – in the film Un Homme et son Péché , "directing Roy is like driving a Maserati: he has smoothness and lightning reactions. He has integrity and looks for truth in everything he does. He is in a phase in his life where he can explore a deeper range. He has carried off more complex roles wonderfully."

With the character of Michael, straightforward but efficient, in La Femme Nikita (1997) Roy Dupuis bought a ticket to international fame. Filmed in Toronto, sometimes for 18 hours per day, this American TV series, inspired by Luc Besson’s film, was to last four and a half years.

As Nikita’s instructor, a ‘cleaner’ who has killed thousands of people, the actor adopts a minimalist style, formulated like a Noh drama, whose restraint borders on austerity. "I worked the character with my eyes only and a very few gestures." The producers haggled, they wanted showmanship; the actor resisted.

The unprecedented success of La Femme Nikita, broadcast in 52 countries, placed the keys to the world in his hands, and insight amongst them. "The moment you become profitable," recognises Roy Dupuis, "you ask yourself if people hire you because they want you as an actor or because you are going to draw the crowds." Rapidly becoming a cult, the high-tech series magnetised millions of enthusiasts. When its demise was announced, thousands sent their VCRs and TV sets to the producers with the message "No longer required". They obtained eight more episodes, one of which was directed by Dupuis.

"Perhaps because I feel a bit cut off from reality, I would like to make documentaries. It's the only thing I watch on TV."

"I would have complete faith in him as a director," says Céline Bonnier. "He has a liking, an instinct for the camera, and is laid-back when everyone else is at breaking point or when there are quick decisions to be made."

Roy Dupuis' name is mentioned on around 5,390 websites (none of them official as he doesn't give his endorsement). The fans adorn their pages with adulation and creativity, writing the impossible. For example, one Peter V. from Vancouver writes: "Here is a man that makes you want to be a woman. Even from the back he has a magnetism….."

"At the moment he's going down extremely well in the countries of the East," declares his agent Hélène Mailloux, sorting through recent mail from Yugoslavia, Sweden, Indonesia, Argentina, Poland, New Zealand, Russia, the USA …. Roy's admirers send him mugs with their photos on them, chess games, English tea (he prefers coffee), kimonos …. But they expect nothing in return. The information has got around the Internet : Roy doesn't answer a single letter, a single email.

"It isn't me they like, they don't know me," he emphasises justifiably <<but out of context – see footnote (ii)>>. But their extravagance flatters him all the same. An example? "A group of people from Tennessee drove to Abitibi to see the house where I was born."

On his birthday, the 21^st April (making him a Taurean like Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino, which doesn't displease him), fans send donations - this is the only way to get a signed photo - to Foundation Mira, who provide guide dogs for the handicapped. "Fame should be used for something useful", he declares. "The union between man and beast suits me well."

"He's a philosopher with the body of an animal, whose metabolism is made for country life. In the city he's a frustrated loner," says his best friend Michel Robert, who makes vegetable terrines under the brand 'Pure Pleasure', and they are worthy of their name.

"I like solitude and peace," Roy states. "Being bored doesn’t bother me".

His great passion : an 1840's farmhouse, situated on the American border, with a nearby forest, a cemetery not far away, and bird colonies. Refitted in aluminium and plastic, the house looked pretty bad. He is restoring it patiently and painstakingly. In return, it makes him feel secure. After filming La Femme Nikita, he shut himself away for six months. "I could scarcely get to the shops. I had overdosed on being permanently on display."

He was born in Amos in 1963, between Roxanne who arrived in 1962 and Roderick <<normally spelt Rodrick>> in 1964. His father Roy (pronounced 'rwa' and not 'roy' like his son), was a salesman with Canada Packers; his mother Rina <<normally Ryna>> Thiffault, taught piano. Roy played the cello (he took lessons between the ages of 4 and 11), his sister the violin, his brother the flute. He was mad about science; his mother wanted him to be a doctor, his father a hockey player. For a long time he was a rebel without a cause, James Dean style, a rebel "with little concern for myself."

A carousel of memories : the tree houses he built as high up in the treetops as possible; his adolescence in Ontario where he had punch-ups with the English; his parents' separation; the numerous house moves. "Imagine, my mother, my sister, my brother, the piano and me in a three and a half !<< house with 3 rooms and a bathroom>>

There is something hurtful screwed down inside him, an old wound that hasn’t healed. "I had a complicated relationship with my father that I don’t want to talk about." His voice betrays a crack in the manly exterior. Bitter, stubborn, an alcoholic, like a lot of our fathers, it seems that M. Dupuis fell out with his brothers and sisters, and didn’t instil in his children a sense of family <<footnote (iii)>>. "But we planted trees together on my land," says the son, in a sort of pledge of reconciliation. "He is there, near to me. His death (in December 2000) clarified my approach to life, I’ve always been a ‘doer’, I’m always getting my hands dirty. Today it’s important to me to be lucid (implying sober), to try to understand who I am, without the support of religion or any such expedient."

Roy knows what he’s talking about. He has ‘done’ all sorts of substances, he has played with matches. For five, six years he taunted the devil, thought himself to be God, got so drunk that everybody was talking about it.

"But I never missed a day’s filming," he adds. "Just 2 or 3 rehearsals," his agent corrects. "And a show for young people at the New Theatre Company (NCT)," recalls director René Richard Cyr, "He paid the travelling expenses of a busload of children out of his own pocket."

That is how legends are created. "I am indestructible," the Roy of those times shouted from the rooftops, honed by childhood hockey and swimming practice. "The resounding fame of Filles de Caleb wrecked me. I was caught in a spiral of self-destruction. In fact I wanted to fade into the background, and no doubt unconsciously, make myself ugly." Failed! He no longer drinks alcohol, except once a year a shot or two of a fine wine (a Sauternes for example).

Roy Dupuis is a graduate of the National Theatre School (the class of ’86, in the elite company of Sylvie Drapeau, Patrice Coquereau, Marie Charlebois), where he made his mark as a powerful, instinctive actor, endowed with a stubborn personality and a body made for sin. Something like an early Alain Delon: a womaniser, a romantic hoodlum, and so on and so forth.

To seduce a young lady, he claims to have borrowed from Shakespeare the speeches of Romeo, whom he played at the New World Theatre (TNM) in 1989, with a style that was more athletic than touching. He walked from Montreal to Sainte-Rose (Laval) to give a girl a kiss; he blew up 250 Mickey Mouse ballons which he arranged above the bed for his girlfriend on her return from Florida; and he gave his lover a bouquet of 24 sunflowers. "It was enormous … and full of bugs."

Marie-Chantal Perron, actress and great friend, confirms: "If his girlfriend likes Rice Krispies he will make her a birthday cake of Rice Krispies shaped like a castle."

He likes the best of everything: the cream of stereo equipment which took him 10 years to be able to afford, the queen of motor bikes (Harley Davidson, it goes without saying), the biggest Christmas tree, the best electric racing track, bought one morning and abandoned by evening … He’s a child with a jar of sweets. When he laughs he throws a blanket of joy over everyone. His rare fits of anger strip the paint off the walls.

Amongst his idols are Peter Gabriel and Dostoïevski; he rereads The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry; he listens to electro-acoustic music; he studies the stars through a telescope; watches through binoculars the American blue jays that feed from his bird tables; he gathers mushrooms; prepares spit-roast lamb; play bowls at night; strokes his dogs … Everything interests him: science, human consciousness, the state of the planet, astrology, the Middle Ages, war …

According to Michel Robert he would make an excellent restaurateur (they plan to open a medieval restaurant on Rue Saint-Denis in Montreal). Marie-Chantal Perron sees him as a truck driver, because of his taste for freedom and travelling. Céline Bonnier as "a biologist, an astronomer or a documentary maker." He wants to devote himself to sculpture, take up the cello and hockey again, finish the screenplay he has begun, and, above all, become a daddy.

Soon to be 39, he wants to have another go at the concept of ‘the family’, to lay the ghosts of the past, to ensure the line of descent. "That’s why I bought the house," he claims.

"Roy," sums up Hélène Mailloux, "is a gigantic tree with many roots."