User:Godsy/John Bourgeois

John Bourgeois (born August 11, 1956) is a Canadian actor, director, and educator.

Early life and education
John Bourgeois was born in Ottawa, Ontario, to a Québécoise father and New Brunswick mother. He received his training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London and Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English and Theatre in 1981.

As a Concordia University journalism student, Bourgeois needed to take a class where he didn't need to write papers. He enrolled in an acting class during which he performed part of the play Death of a Salesman. In a 2013 interview with Richard Crouse, he called the experience "transformational" in inspiring him to pursue acting, and said "[he] was bitten".

Career
Bourgeois served as a production assistant for the 1978 film Blood Relatives, during which he was star Donald Sutherland's driver. He said in the 2013 interview that Sutherland's performance "wasn't just showing off" and "changed [his] view of the craft". His initial time acting professionally on stage was on October 13, 1979.

Bourgeois joined the Stratford Shakespeare Company in 1985 and portrayed a knight during the troupe's Chicago performance of King Lear. He departed from Stratford Festival in 1987 and started to focus on directing. In his directorial debut, Bourgeois directed the Harbourfront Centre Studio Theatre's production of the play Landscape of the Body in 1988, starring Linda Goranson and Gwynyth Walsh and with Conrad Coates in a supporting role. Toronto Star theatre critic Henry Mietkiewicz praised Bourgeois for his "sprightly direction" that stayed true to playwright John Guare's "revel[ing] in the wild eccentricities of his characters". Bourgeois directed the Theatre Plus production of the Arthur Miller play The Price at Jane Mallett Theatre in 1989. Henry Mietkiewicz praised Bourgeois for "faithfully follow[ing] Miller's instructions by allowing us to see the nobility and self-delusion in both men".

Bourgeois cofounded Ziggurat Theatre with actors Simon Bradbury and Caro Coltman. Ziggurat's first production was in 1988: Steven Berkoff's play Decadence, a "frank and vicious indictment of Margaret Thatcher's Britain". In 1989, he directed Hunger, a play he adapted from Knut Hamsun's novel Hunger. Canadian Jewish News reviewer Ben Rose wrote. "Adapter/director Bourgeois doesn't do this as elegantly as Bernard Shaw but the play has the virtue of staying right on topic."

In 1990, Bourgeois and his wife starred in the Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune play at the Citadel Rice Theatre. Edmonton Journal theatre critic Liz Nicholls found Bourgeois' performance as Johnny to be "wonderfully volatile, comic, buoyant and vulnerable as the self-styled 'knight of the grill'". He played the role of Gallimard in the play M. Butterfly at the Theatre Aquarius in Ontario in 1992. The Hamilton Spectator said his performance was "consistent, solid" and "very credible, very human, and the cornerstone to keeping this production rooted in reality". He in 1994 received a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for directing the play The Taming Of The Shrew. In 1995, he played the Ku Klux Klan recruiter Morgan Kale in Raymond Storey's 1992 play The Glorious Twelfth at the National Arts Centre in a performance that Ottawa Citizen theatre critic Janice Kennedy described as "creat[ing] a nice blend of sleazy hucksterism with zealous bigotry".

He wrote and directed the one-man show Tansey's Brag, which was shown at Toronto Fringe Festival, about Michael Tansey, a Jesuit priest. Toronto Star theatre critic Richard Ouzounian gave the play three stars. He had a mixed review of the play, writing that Bourgeois is "excellent as Tansey, with a self-lacerating wit that stings as often as it amuses" and "he is capable of real emotion, both as writer and actor". Ouzounian criticized the play's writing, finding that it "tries to telescope too much into one hour, and some of its structure is awkward, leaning on offstage voices and discovered letters".

In 2013, Bourgeois starred in the play God of Carnage at Panasonic Theatre. Toronto Star theater critic Robert Crew wrote that Bourgeois "is the wonderfully work-absorbed lawyer Alan, who is clearly there on sufferance". Critic Christopher Holle of Stage Door criticized Bourgeois' portrayal of Alan, writing, that he "does not tinge his polite conversation with Michael and Veronica with enough sarcasm that would point to his real view of them that emerges later". Bourgeois has also worked for three months on Off-Broadway.

In addition to his work in theatre, Bourgeois has performed on-screen in countless film and television productions. He had significant roles in the feature films Judgment Day: The Ellie Nesler Story and Ginger Snaps and in the made for television movies Ms. Scrooge, My Father's Shadow: The Sam Sheppard Story, The Interrogation of Michael Crowe, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story, Love Thy Neighbor, Taking a Chance on Love, Unstable and When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story. Corpus Christi Caller-Times film critic Ricardo Baca praised Bourgeois' performance in the 2002 TV film Guilty Hearts starring Marcia Gay Harden, writing that he "plays deceit delightfully as the church's money hungry reverend".

Bourgeois directed the short film Jimmy Pacheco, a "dark kidnap caper", in 1999, starring Henry Czerny, Jayne Eastwood, J. C. MacKenzie, Maria Vacratsis, and Bourgeois' wife, among others. Jimmy Pacheco received nominations for Best Comedy at the Yorkton Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival.

In 2018, he guest starred as Eric's estranged father Phillip Hingston in the "Legacy" episode of the TV series Ransom. He plays Police Chief Angus Pershing on the TV series Carter, which premiered in 2018.

He has been the program director of Acting for Film and Television at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, since 2005.

Personal life
Bourgeois bilingual in English and French. He met his future wife Maria Ricossa during the North American tour of the Stratford Festival of Canada production of the William Shakespeare play King Lear. Ricossa played Regan and Bourgeois played King of France and knights. Directed by John Hirsch, the play toured from November 1985 to February 1986. Bourgeois and Ricossa married when they finished the tour around 1986. Eric McCormack, a company member, gifted them a wine goblet and promised to give them a second one after five years.

The couple have three daughters. The oldest, Olivia, was born in 1987 and the two youngest were twins born in 1989 or 1990. Since Ricossa was born in Michigan, their children have dual citizenship from Canada and the United States. In January 2005, Bourgeois and his wife, Maria Ricossa, played husband and wife for the first time in David Gow's play Bea's Niece at Tarragon Theatre.