Part IV - On acting

"And that is what the shy actor does well (uses body language & mime).  It is a kind of natural talent that I have. That is why I was accepted at the acting school. I am a man that mostly uses body language.” Veronica Magazine, April, 2000

"I think that an actor is a servant. First I serve the writer, then the director. As an actor my job is to give everything: my imagination, my conscience, my body and even my soul."  Katso - March 13 - 21, 1999

FF: And at that point were you beginning to be interested in the performing arts, or had that not happened for you yet?

RD: It never really happened. I mean it was almost an accident.

FF: And when did that accident occur?

RD: Okay, let’s see. It’s kind of a long story. An old piano student of my mother’s came to visit her, and this girl now had a boyfriend, and this guy wanted to go see a movie. And he was alone so I said, "I’ll go with you." And we went to see the movie Molière.

FF: That was shown here on PBS.

RD: It’s amazing.

FF: Isn’t it? It’s fantastic.

RD: Yeah. And I saw that movie. At that time I was studying at secondary five. I was getting more into science. I liked chemistry and physics and mathematics. I liked the ‘whys’ of things. And so I saw that movie, and the day after that I dropped my physics class to go into this French theater course, just on the influence of the movie I guess, of the character of this masterpiece I just saw.

...I met this girl who was doing Toinette, and she had decided she wanted to be an actress. She was going to present her auditions to the National Theatre School of Canada, which I didn’t know existed.

And so about six months later she called me and says she’s preparing her auditions, and she asked me if I would do lines for her. So I said yes, and then we rehearsed, and two days before her audition, which was on my birthday, the twenty-first of April, she comes to my birthday and gives me as a present the questionnaire the National Theatre School sends you when you subscribe to the auditions. It was the questionnaire of a friend of hers who had registered for the auditions, but didn’t want to go any more. And I said why not. And so I went to the auditions with her. We said we were going to do our auditions together. And another lucky thing was that the guy who didn’t go to the audition had the same date and same hour that she had. So they said okay, so my name was Stefan Labelle, and I was presenting my audition with her.

So we did our scenes. One of the scenes was from Le Malade Imaginaire, and another one was by a Quebec playwright. And after that we went to the desk to discuss with the people who watched you do the auditions, and another stroke of luck was that the director of the National Theatre School and another person were there -- because there’s many teams that see actors come in.

FF: And was there any particular technique that you found that you just naturally gravitated to, of any one particular instructor or director?

RD: No. I think I’ve – well, Stanislavsky is the base, and then Grotowski has some other stuff that you can use. Depending on what you’re doing. And you know .... the more tools you have.

FF: Exactly.

RD: So, depending on the characters you’re playing, or the style of movie, or the style of the play you’re doing, any of the tools might be useful.

FF: Right. And are there any special student improvisations or productions that stand out in memory as key to your development during that time?

RD: No, you see actually another thing at the National Theatre School of Canada, you get in and you’re sixteen -- eight boys, eight girls. And you go four years with the same group.

FF: Wow. That’s pretty intense.

RD: It kind of becomes another family.

FF: Sure.

RD: So each and every one of them, yeah, were very important for me.  Fashion Finds Online, July, 1999  http://www.fashionfinds.com/july/pages/roy-dupuis-1.htm

LF: I first saw you in Les Filles de Caleb where you played the unforgettable Ovila. You give the impression of attaching great importance to the person you are acting with, which in turn makes the viewer feel important.

RD: I asked myself an enormous number of questions before I started playing the part, but from the moment I started acting I stopped questioning. I don’t like to analyse exactly what I do. I don’t like to put myself in a box.  Unknown source, 1997

INT: The press in general speak of you as the Quebecois James Dean, and Claude Fournier says that there is no one in Quebec more popular and desirable than you and Patrick Huard. Is that a hard image to live up to?

RD: It’s very nice to be compared with James Dean because he was a great actor, but as for the most desirable or most popular, I’m less happy with that.  I try not to let this impact on my private life and at the moment it’s not too difficult.  There are times when it bothers me but still it’s very nice.  In any case I make my choices in accordance with my conscience, and it has nothing to do with a desire to please the public. Fugues, March, 1997

SL: When you are "in that moment" in front of the camera, are you living in the character’s life, or in Roy’s life as he plays the character?

RD: It depends on the scene, mostly. If the writing and the situation are strong enough to make me forget and to inspire me to be the character, it happens sometimes.  I call it a moment of magic. Sometimes you are there and only there. But to see that it happens you have to still be conscious of it.

SL: You have to stay awake?

RD: Acting is like a sponge you know. If you soak yourself into this world before shooting, and then you squeeze out what you’ve learned while you are shooting, you just let go of what you think is good at that time. And you release information and feelings and pictures--real pictures, views of life.

SL: That takes a lot of trust and confidence doesn’t it?

RD: Yes, It is based on that.

SL: And you have to trust the person you are acting with.

RD: It’s the only way I can work, with trust in the other.

Single Living, Sept/Oct, 1997

"Tormented characters are strong and complex roles.  It's a beautiful challenge to make the audience love someone who was unpleasant at the beginning like Alex in "Cap Tourmente."  It would also be challenging to be miscast. You have to like the character first to make him real."

How does he approach his roles? "It depends on the character.  I'm inspired by the part, often with flashes. To portray Yves in BAHWC, I felt the need to mingle with the gay prostitutes. For Cap Tourmente, I had the resources in me. I am myself a sort of Survenant and I'm very close to my mother like Alex is to Jeanne (Andree Lachapelle). Plus, we exchange a lot between actors as we talk of our life experiences." Arts et Spectacles, Feb 1993 (originally translated and posted by Kadyn in MO)

"The important thing is that it gels." Particularly with directors. "If a project interests me, if it’s a challenge, and if there’s a chemistry between us, I get on board. It’s the only way I tackle the future and the work. As a matter of fact, it’s not work, it’s encounters." Elle Quebec, Nov, 1993