Micheline Lanctôt
Micheline Lanctôt is a Canadian actress, film director, screenwriter, and musician.
Biography
Lanctôt was born in Frelighsburg, Quebec. Her post-secondary education was in music, fine arts, and theatre at Collège Jésus-Marie in Outremont, and in art history at the Université de Montréal and the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; she later studied film animation at the National Film Board of Canada and then at Gerald Potterton's studios, Potterton Productions, where she remained for four years.Lanctôt began her acting career in 1972, winning a Canadian Film Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Gilles Carle's The True Nature of Bernadette . Since then, she has appeared in a wide variety of film and television roles, such as Carle's The Heavenly Bodies , Ted Kotcheff's award-winning The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Claude Chabrol's Blood Relatives and Guy Fournier's Radio-Canada TV series Jamais deux sans toi.
She has directed for the theatre also, directing Oleanna by David Mamet for the Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal in 1994, and in 1999, Bousille et les justes by Gratien Gélinas for the Théâtre du Rideau Vert.
She began her live-action film-directing career with The Handyman , nominated for best direction and for best film at the Genie Awards in 1981. This success was followed by Sonatine, which launched the career of Pascale Bussières and won both the Genie Award for Best Director at the Genie Awards in 1985, and the now-defunct Silver Lion for Best First Film at the 41st Venice International Film Festival.
Since 1982, Lanctôt has been a part-time instructor in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University.
Lanctôt defended Gaétan Soucy's novel The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches in the 2004 edition of Le Combat des livres, broadcast on Première Chaîne.
In 2016 she was the curator of the Festival Vues dans la tête de... film festival in Rivière-du-Loup. She is also a matron of the Prix collégial du cinéma québécois, an annual program engaging film studies students in Quebec CEGEPs to present an award for the year's best Quebec film.
Awards and recognition
- Winner of an Etrog, best performance by a lead actress
- Winner of the Genie, best achievement in direction, for Sonatine
- Winner of the Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival for best first work, Sonatine
- Recipient of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement
Filmography
Film
Acting rolesThe True Nature of Bernadette - 1972The Heavenly Bodies - 1973Noël et Juliette - 1973Souris, tu m'inquiètes - 1973Voyage to Grand Tartarie - 1974The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - 1974Child Under a Leaf - 1974Little Tougas - 1976Blood Relatives - 1978Blood and Guts - 1978A Scream from Silence - 1979The Coffin Affair - 1980L'Oreille d'un sourd - 1996Heads or Tails - 1997The Revenge of the Woman in Black - 1997Streetheart - 1998Now or Never - 1998The Long Winter - 1999Le Petit ciel - 1999Women Without Wings - 2002How My Mother Gave Birth to Me During Menopause - 2003The Barbarian Invasions - 2003Children of the Setting Suns - 2003A Year in the Death of Jack Richards - 2004Familia - 2004Good Neighbours - 2010Sarah Prefers to Run - 2013Winter Claire - 2017Laughter - 2020Family Game - 2022Frontiers - 2023The Nature of Love - 2023You Are Not Alone - 2024Where Souls Go - 2025Television
ActressJamais deux sans toi - 1977, 1996' - 1996Réseaux - 1998Le Pollock - 1999Tag Bunker, le cirque - 2002Le Bonheur c'est une chanson triste - 2004Un monde à part - 2004Tripping the Wire: A Stephen Tree Mystery - 2005Unité 9 - 2012-2015The Disappearance - 2017Director'Eve The Stones Les Guerriers''