Albert Millaire

Albert Millaire made his debut at age 15. He was only 21 when he was appointed assistant artistic director of the Chanteclerc Summer Theatre, where he acted in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and Pirandello’s Six personnages en quête d’auteur. He also performed in the Canadian premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, also assisting with the play’s stage direction.

A versatile performer, his remarkable career spans both the classic and modern repertoires. In the theatre, he has performed in the lead roles in Lorenzaccio (Musset), Hamlet (Shakespeare), and played Don Juan and Alceste (Molière’s Don Juan and Le Misanthrope) and Figaro (Beaumarchais’ Mariage de Figaro). Audiences have also seen him perform both as an actor and a director in Roch Carrier’s La Céleste Bicyclette (1981, 1996), Rampal’s Célimène et le Cardinal (1994), and La Mandragore (1998) by Jean-Pierre Ronfard. For five seasons, he was a guest actor and director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario.

His television roles include Hippolyte (Racine’s Phèdre), Iago (Shakespeare’s Othello) and the characters he portrayed in Le Courrier du Roy (1959–1961), Iberville (1968–1969), Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1986), Cyrano de Bergerac (1987 ) and Mémoires Vives (2013 to 2015). Albert Millaire has also left his mark on the cinema, playing roles in feature films including Fernand Dansereau’s Le Maître du Pérou, Bernard Devlin’s L’Héritage and J’en suis by Claude Fournier.

Widely recognized by his peers, Albert Millaire has been awarded the Prix Victor-Morin (1983) and the titles of Knight of the Ordre national du Québec (1995) and Officer of the Order of Canada (1989). He has directed a theatre production company that bears his name and has served as president of the Académie québécoise du théâtre. He has also been a member of the Concordia Arts Faculty advisory council.

Albert Millaire was inducted into the Academy of Great Montrealers in the Cultural category in 1999 and was named a Commander of the Ordre de Montréal in 2016.