Andrée Lachapelle

In addition to repertory theatre, Andrée Lachapelle has participated in the creation of plays by Quebec playwrights and has been cast in various roles in numerous television series broadcast on all major networks in Quebec and Canada.

Andrée Lachapelle began her career as an actress in the early 1950s, interpreting roles in the theatre and in the first cultural programming broadcast by Radio-Canada. She was also seen in Les Beaux Dimanches; Bilan and Le retour des oies blanches by Marcel Dubé; La Locandiera by Goldoni; Oncle Vania and La cerisaie by Anton Chekhov; La Dame de chez Maxim by Georges Feydeau; adaptations of three Tennessee Williams’ plays, Un tramway nommé Désir, La chatte sur un toit brûlant and Soudain l’été dernier; L’homme éléphant by Bernard Pomerance; Molière’s Les femmes savantes; Célimène et le Cardinal by Jacques Rampal; Albertine en cinq temps by Michel Tremblay; and Le passage de L’Indiana by Normand Chaurette, staged at the Festival d’Avignon in 1996; and in Sophocle’s Electra.

Her television career spans some 50 years. Andrée Lachapelle has been featured in numerous televised plays and a host of dramatic series. Viewers will recall, among others, her roles in Monsieur le Ministre by Solange Chaput-Rolland; Filles d’Ève by Louis Morisset; and Le volcan tranquille by Pierre Gauvreau, broadcast on Radio-Canada from 1995 to 1998; her role as Sister Anne in Miséricorde by filmmaker Jean Beaudin; as well as Marie-Thérèse Fournier in Le temps d’une paix.

In the cinema, she was featured in Jacques Goodbout’s YUL 871; Dino Rossi’s Caro Papa; Yves Simoneau’s Dans le ventre du dragon; and Michel Langlois’s Cap tourmente and Comme un voleur. The latter role earned her the Prix Guy-L’Écuyer in 1990.

In addition to acting, Andrée Lachapelle devotes considerable time to certain causes of major importance to her. Notably, she served as the president of Amnesty International’s fundraising campaign for some time and, from 1980 to 1988, as president of La Galerie Maximum, an organization dedicated to promoting artwork produced by prisoners. She was also the spokesperson for Carrefour pour Elle, an organization dedicated to helping female victims of violence.

President of auditions at Théâtre de Quat’Sous since 1985, Andrée Lachapelle is always eager to work with young authors and creative talents in the theatre and cinema sectors.

Andrée Lachapelle, who was also the first president of the Académie québécoise du théâtre, was appointed a Knight of the Ordre national du Québec in 1998 and an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1985. She was inducted into the Academy of Great Montrealers in the Cultural category in 2000 and was named a Commander of the Ordre de Montréal in 2016.

Andrée Lachapelle died on November 21, 2019.