Biography: The second of three children of devout French-Canadian Catholics, Genevieve Bujold spent her first twelve school years in Montreal's strict Hochelaga Convent, where opportunities for self-expression were limited to making welcoming speeches for visiting clerics. As a child, she felt "as if I were in a long, dark tunnel, trying to convince myself that if I could ever get out, there was light ahead" ... show all The second of three children of devout French-Canadian Catholics, Genevieve Bujold spent her first twelve school years in Montreal's strict Hochelaga Convent, where opportunities for self-expression were limited to making welcoming speeches for visiting clerics. As a child, she felt "as if I were in a long, dark tunnel, trying to convince myself that if I could ever get out, there was light ahead". Caught reading a forbidden novel, she was handed her ticket out of the convent, and she then enrolled in Montreal's free Conservatoire d"Art Dramatique. There she was trained in classical French drama, and, shortly before graduation, was offered a part in a professional production of Beaumarchais' "The Barber of Seville". In 1965, while on a theatrical tour of Paris with another Montreal company, Rideau Vert, Bujold was recommended to director Alain Renais (by his mother!), who cast her opposite Yves Montand in "La Guerre est Finie". She then made two other French films in quick succession, the Philippe de Broca cult-classic King of Hearts, and Louis Malle's Le Voleur. Also during this time, she was very active in Canadian television, where she met and married director 'Paul Almond' in 1967. They had one child, and divorced in 1973. Two remarkable appearances --first as Shaw's Saint Joan on television in 12/67, then as Anne Boleyn in her Hollywood debut role ("Anne of the Thousand Days", 1969)--introduced Bujold to American audiences and yielded Emmy and Oscar nominations, respectively. Immediately after "Anne", while under contract with Universal, she opted out of a planned "Mary Queen of Scots" ("it would be the same producer, the same director, the same costumes, the same me!") prompting the studio to sue her for $750,000. Rather than pay, she went to Greece to film "The Trojan Women" (1971) with Katharine Hepburn. Her virtuoso performance as the mad seer Cassandra led Pauline Kael to prophesy "prodigies ahead", but to assuage Universal, Bujold eventually returned to Hollywood to make "Earthquake" (1974). A host of other films of varying quality followed, but she managed nevertheless to transcend the material and deliver performances with her trademark combination of ferocious intensity and child-like vulnerability. In the 1980's, she found her way to director Alan Rudolph's nether world and joined his film family for three movies, including "Choose Me". Highlights of recent work are her brave performance in Cronenberg's "Dead Ringers", and a lovely turn in the autumnal romance, "A Paper Wedding" (1990). hide |
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