Genevieve Bujold as Dr. Susan Wheeler
When a friend goes into a coma, Dr. Susan Wheeler becomes interested in the idea of being alive and dead at the same time. She looks into her hospital's records and finds that it's happening there more than it should. Writer/director Michael Crichton bases his horror on the all too real world of the hospital. He doesn't need gallons of blood, the sight of ominous figures in green scrubs, medical machines, and the tilewalls are enough to scare the pants off most viewers.
Biography for Genevi�ve Bujold
Date of birth
1 July 1942
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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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).
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Trivia
She gave up the demanding job of Captain of the USS Voyager ( "Star Trek: Voyager" (1995) ) after only one day of filming. Kate Mulgrew followed her into the Captain's Chair.
Was cast as Baroness Kessler in Roman Polanski's Ninth Gate, The (1999), but became ill at the last moment and had to give up the part.
Her son with director Almond, Paul, Matthew James Almond, is also an actor and director.
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Personal quotes
"Her hair is shiny and gleaming as a stallion's mane, her eyes big and brown as chocolate jawbreakers, her tiny mouth a rosebud of surprise. Packed into her five-foot, four-inch doll's frame is an intriguing mixture of purloined innocence, succulent sexuality, and guerrilla warfare." Rex Reed, Valentines and Vitriol, p. 258, 1977.
"I confess it, I love the camera. When it's not on me, I'm not quite alive." Genevieve Bujold, Time 3/30/70.
"I don't like to intellectualize about my acting. I don't sit around and study the pages of a script over and over again. I don't worry whether the period is contemporary or three hundred years ago. Human beings are all alike. The main thing in acting is honesty, to feel the humanity and get to the essence of the character. You can't put anything into a character that you haven't got within you." Genevieve Bujold, Seventeen, 11/69.
"It isn't so easy to live with an actress. I married Genevieve--not Isabel or St. Joan or Anne Boleyn--but I live with them all...There is a curious internal process going on in her that begins the moment she signs to do a picture. At the first "Action!" she has become the character, and it never leaves her until long after the last "Cut!" Paul Almond (ex-husband)
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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:Intelligent, underused French-Canadian actress who has weathered more than her share of career ups and downs, alternating Hollywood assignments with films in her native country. The convent-educated Bujold studied drama at the Quebec Conservatory and subsequently acted in French-Canadian theater. A trip to Europe brought the dark, petite, soulful actress to the attention of French director Alain Resnais, who cast her opposite Yves Montand in La Guerre Est Finie (1966). Philippe De Broca's cult hit King of Hearts (1966) proved to be an admirable showcase for Bujold, but her startling performance in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) earned Bujold an Oscar nomination and made her a recognizable if lower-tier star. In 1967 she'd married director Paul Almond, who featured her in some of his unusual, offbeat films Act of the Heart, Isabel before their divorce in 1973.
A string of mostly forgettable American pictures followed, though she was impressive in a dual mother-daughter role in Brian De Palma's Obsession (1976) and as a doomed prostitute in Murder by Decree (1979). She was an unlikely leading lady to action star Clint Eastwood in the psycho-thriller Tightrope (1984), and contributed intriguing performances to several Alan Rudolph films, Choose Me (1984), Trouble in Mind (1985), and The Moderns (1988). In David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (1988), she was a confused love interest to identical twins played by Jeremy Irons. Her latest credit is An Ambush of Ghosts (1993).
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Finding Home (2002) .... Katie
Turbulence des fluides, La (2002)
Alex in Wonder (2001) .... Natalie
Children of My Heart (2000) (TV) .... Gabrielle Roy
Bookfair Murders, The (2000) (TV) .... Margaret
Eye of the Beholder (1999) .... Dr. Jeanne Brault
You Can Thank Me Later (1998) .... Joelle
Last Night (1998) .... Mrs. Carlton
House of Yes, The (1997) (as Genevieve Bujold) .... Mrs. Pascal
Dead Innocent (1996) .... Suzanne St. Laurent
... aka Eye (2000) (USA: video title)
Adventures of Pinocchio, The (1996) .... Leone
... aka Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio (1996)
... aka Legende von Pinocchio, Die (1996) (Germany)
... aka Pinocchio (1996/I) (France)
Mon amie Max (1994) .... Marie-Alexandrine Brabant
Ambush of Ghosts, An (1993) .... Irene Betts
Oh, What a Night (1992) .... Eva
Dance Goes On, The (1991)
False Identity (1990) .... Rachel Roux
Rue du Bac (1990) .... Marie Aubriac
Noces de papier, Les (1989) (TV) .... Claire Rocheleau
... aka Paper Wedding, The (1989) (TV) (Canada: English title)
Red Earth, White Earth (1989) (TV)
... aka Snake Treaty (1989) (TV)
Moderns, The (1988) .... Libby Valentin
Dead Ringers (1988) .... Claire Niveau
Trouble in Mind (1985) .... Wanda
Tightrope (1984) .... Beryl Thibodeaux
Choose Me (1984) .... Dr. Nancy Love
Monsignor (1982) .... Clara
Mistress of Paradise (1981) (TV) .... Elizabeth Beaufort
Final Assignment (1980) .... Nicole Thomson
... aka Moscow Chronicle (1990) (USA: video title)
Last Flight of Noah's Ark, The (1980) .... Bernadette Lafleur
Murder by Decree (1979) .... Annie Crook
... aka Sherlock Holmes: Murder by Decree (1979)
Coma (1978) .... Doctor Susan Wheeler
Un autre homme, une autre chance (1977) .... Jeanne Leroy
... aka Another Man, Another Chance (1977) (USA)
... aka Another Man, Another Woman (1977) (UK)
Alex & the Gypsy (1976) .... Maritza
... aka Love and Other Crimes (1976)
Swashbuckler (1976) .... Jane Barnet
... aka Scarlet Buccaneer (1976) (UK)
Obsession (1976) .... Elizabeth Courtland/Sandra Portinari
Caesar and Cleopatra (1976) (TV) .... Cleopatra
Incorrigible, L' (1975) .... Marie-Charlotte Pontalec
... aka Incorrigible, The (1975)
... aka Unverbesserliche, Der (1975)
Earthquake (1974) .... Denise Marshall
Antigone (1974) (TV) .... Antigone
Antigone (1973) (TV) .... Antigone
Kamouraska (1973) .... �lisabeth
Journey (1972/I) .... Saguenay
... aka D�tour (1972) (Canada: French title)
Trojan Women, The (1971) .... Cassandra
Act of the Heart (1970) .... Martha Hayes
... aka Acte du coeur (1970) (Canada: French title)
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) .... Anne Boleyn
... aka Anne of a Thousand Days (1969)
Isabel (1968) .... Isabel
Saint Joan (1967) (TV) .... Saint Joan of Arc
Voleur, Le (1967) .... Charlotte
... aka Thief of Paris, The (1967) (USA)
Entre la mer et l'eau douce (1967) .... Genevieve
... aka Between Sweet and Salt Water (1967) (International: English title)
... aka Drifting Upstream (1967) (Canada: English title)
Roi de coeur, Le (1966) .... Coquelicot
... aka King of Hearts (1966) (USA)
... aka Tutti pazzi meno io (1966) (Italy)
Guerre est finie, La (1966) .... Nadine Sallanches
... aka Kriget �r slut (1967) (Sweden)
... aka War Is Over, The (1966) (USA)
Genevi�ve (1965) .... Genevi�ve
Fin des �t�s, La (1964)
Fleur de l'�ge, ou Les adolescentes, La (1964) .... Genevieve
... aka Adolescenti, Le (1964) (Italy)
... aka Adolescents, Les (1964)
... aka Fleur de l'�ge, La (1964) (France: short title)
... aka Shishunki (1964) (Japan)
... aka That Tender Age (1964/I)
Terre � boire, La (1964) .... Barbara
Amanita Pestilens (1963) .... Sophie Martin
"Belles histoires des Pays-d'en-Haut, Les" (1956) TV Series .... Julie Fourchu