Pascale Bussières

Pascale Bussières

Pascale Bussières, actress (b at Montréal 27 June 1968). Pascale Bussières had no experience in the acting profession when Micheline Lanctôt recruited her to play a suicidal adolescent in Sonatine (1983), and she attained star status through television with her title role in the mini-series Blanche.

In the 1990s, she became a sought-after star even though she played mainly in auteur film, where she excelled in roles combining youth, beauty and anguish. She was the passionate mistress of a married man in La Vie fantôme (Phantom Life, Jacques Leduc, 1992), a woman troubled by the arrival of a sister in Deux actrices (Two Can Play, M. Lanctôt, 1993), and a model who puts her work and her love life to the challenge in Un 32 août sur terre (August 32nd on Earth, Denis Villeneuve, 1998). Charles Binamé's trilogy (Eldorado, 1995, Le CÏur au poing [Streetheart], 1998, and La Beauté de Pandore [Pandora's Beauty], 2000) typecast her in roles as loose and dangerous women, but her performances have not been limited to such characters . Although Jean Beaudin filmed Pascales Bussières as heartless and vengeful in Souvenirs intimes (Memories Unlocked, 1998), for director Léa Pool she portrayed a submissive spouse in Emporte-moi (Set Me Free, 1999).

She is equally proficient shooting in English, notably with directors Patricia Rozema (When Night is Falling, 1995), Guy Maddin (Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, 1997) and Attila Bertalan (Between the Moon and Montevideo, 1999), and she works internationally in both French and English. She appeared with Geneviève Bujold in La Turbulence des fluides (Chaos and Desire, 2002) by Manon Briand, and in the musical comedy based on the life of Alys Robi, Ma Vie en cinemascope (Bittersweet Memories, 2003) by Denise Filiatrault.

Endowed with angular features that are both tough and sensual, Pascale Bussières is a modern actress well suited for portraying the agonies of heart and soul to her generation.