See also Biography Index (G) :: Filmography Index (G) :: Discography Index (G)

Geneviève Bujold (born on July 1, 1942, in Montréal, Québec) is a Canadian actress. She is best known for portraying Anne Boleyn in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969).

Issued from a French-Canadian working-class family, Bujold was the daughter of Firmin Bujold, a bus driver, and his wife Laurette Cavanaugh. Her parents were strict Roman Catholic and sent her to a convent school for her full 12 years of education. She disliked the school and its strict discipline, and eventually left it to pursue an acting career.

Dramatically trained at Montreal`s Conservatory of Dramatic Art, she got her big break in 1965 while on tour with a theatrical company in Paris, when French director Alain Resnais selected her for a role opposite Yves Montand in La Guerre est finie. This led to her staying in France for a time where she made two other films; Philippe de Broca`s Le Roi de Coeur, opposite Alan Bates and Louis Malle`s Le voleur, opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Upon her return to Canada, she met and married film director Paul Almond in 1967, with whom she had a son Matthew (born in 1968). She then appeared successively in three of his films; Isabel (1968), The Act of the Heart (1970) and Journey (1972). The couple divorced in 1973, but worked again together in Final Assignment (1980) and The Dance Goes On (1992).

Bujold also appeared in Claude Jutra`s film Kamouraska in 1973, based on a novel by Anne Hébert, for which she won the Canadian Film Award for best actress.

Bujold appeared in a variety of roles for Canadian and U.S. television, notably for NBC`s Hallmark Hall of Fame in George Bernard Shaw`s classics Saint Joan in 1967, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination, and Caesar and Cleopatra in 1976, opposite Sir Alec Guinness. She also appeared in Jean Anouilh`s Antigone on PBS in 1974.

International fame came in 1969, when she starred opposite Richard Burton in the film Anne of the Thousand Days, for her portrayal of the feisty Anne Boleyn, she won a Golden Globe Award as best actress in a leading role, and received an Academy Award nomination in the same category. The following year, she played the role of the visionary Cassandra in Michael Cacoyannis`s film version of The Trojan Women, opposite Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Irene Papas.

Bujold was touted to become a star, but her temper led to run-ins with her employer Universal Studios and she walked away from her contract, resulting in a lawsuit, which was settled when she agreed to appear in the 1974 disaster film Earthquake, opposite Charlton Heston, and the adventure film Swashbuckler (1976), opposite Robert Shaw. In the ensuing years, she appeared in Obsession, opposite Cliff Robertson (1976), Another man, another chance, opposite James Caan (1977), Coma, opposite Michael Douglas (1978), Monsignor, opposite Christopher Reeve (1982), Tightrope, opposite Clint Eastwood (1984).

She formed a professional friendship with director Alan Rudolph, and appeared in three of his films; Choose Me (1984), Trouble in Mind (1985) and The Moderns (1988). She also appeared in David Cronenberg`s psychological horror film Dead Ringers (1988), opposite Jeremy Irons.

After a long absence from Québec, she returned to appear in two films directed by Michel Brault; Les Noces de papier (1989) and Mon amie Max (1994).

In 1994, she signed on to play the lead character, initially called Captain Nicole Janeway, in the American television s