After more than 50 years of career: a great variety of roles for Louise Turcot

MISE À DAY

Louise Turcot will be more present than ever this year on our screens. At 78, the actress says she is overwhelmed by the variety of roles she has had the chance to defend recently in film and television. 

“When you get older, you often offers us the roles of women lying on a hospital bed or suffering from Alzheimer's, she laments. But there, the characters that I have been offered for some time are very diverse. In the movie Notre-Dame de Moncton [opening next week], I play a character of a very active and fit woman who takes charge of her life. It’s really interesting.”

In addition to this role in Notre-Dame de Moncton, Louise Turcot recently slipped into the shoes of an elderly woman victim of sexual violence in the second season of the series Reasonable Doubt, broadcast this winter. We will also find her later this year in the film Le temps d'unété, by Louise Archambault, but also in Testament, the new dramatic comedy by Denys Arcand.< /p>

Although she is currently going through a stimulating period in her career, Louise Turcot is well aware that the situation could be very different in a year or two. It is because in this profession, which she has been practicing for more than 50 years, “getting old is often synonymous with the absence of work”, she recalls.

“It's a flaw in our profession,” she says. When we get older, we have a lot of experience and know-how that we want to share, but unfortunately this is the period when we become less interesting for people who write. TV and cinema belong to the youngest, and that's normal. But I think we could have both. We could have a lot of roles for characters in their twenties and thirties, but also have a few for older people. Because they exist in society. It would be fun to have them represented. It's my little personal fight!”

“A benevolent film”

Louise Turcot fell in love with the screenplay of Our Lady of Moncton, second feature film by director Denise Bouchard. The film relates the unexpected meeting between a young woman (Laurie Gagné) who is preparing to reconnect with the son she had to place for adoption 20 years earlier and an elderly lady (Louise Turcot) who has just lost her husband.&nbsp ;

“What I liked the most about this scenario is that it is a benevolent film, she gets carried away. It's a good movie. People who saw it said to us: my God, it feels good to see a film about mutual aid, and to see people who have sympathy and who help each other in life. It really is a beautiful subject. These are two women who are each at a key moment in their lives. Instead of turning against each other, they will work together to improve their lives. That's what makes the beauty of the film.”

The actress was also delighted to go and spend a few weeks in Moncton in the spring of 2022 to shoot the film with a team mainly from New Brunswick. Her spouse, Gilles Renaud, was by her side since he also plays a role in the feature film. 

“We always like it, playing together, Gilles and I, but it happens very often to us. little, she observes. In this case, he plays my husband, but unfortunately he dies in the first half hour of the film (laughs). We like working together because we have the same way of seeing play and work.”

Notre-Dame de Moncton hits theaters March 24.