Michèle Magny

Michèle Magny was born in 1944 and grew up in Outremont, Montreal, the second of seven children. Her family lived next door to Jean Gascon, who founded the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in 1951 and sometimes drove the children to school in winter storms; she attended a convent school with his daughters. A keen reader from childhood, she wanted to study literature and write.

At 18 she left Outremont to enrol at the new Collège Valéry in east Montreal, where she befriended future actresses Sophie Clément and Francine Racette. Interviewing Jean Gascon for the college paper, she was encouraged to audition for the National Theatre School of Canada, prepared with private lessons from Marcel Sabourin and was accepted. Her class included Robert Charlebois and Mouffe, and she graduated in acting in 1966. In April 1966 Radio-Canada filmed her as a graduating student reading Boris Vian's Les Bâtisseurs d'empire.

Her first professional role was the guardian angel in Claudel's Le Soulier de satin, directed by Jean-Louis Roux at the TNM. After a scholarship period in Paris with Francine Racette she returned to Montreal and built a long stage career in repertoire and new work. She was part of the collective feminist show La Nef des sorcières (1976) and of Denise Boucher's Les Fées ont soif (1978), whose TNM run sparked a fierce controversy. Other stage work included Tremblay's Bonjour, là, bonjour, Gauvreau's La Charge de l'orignal épormyable, Garneau's Quatre à quatre on tour in France, Anne Legault's O'Neill and a French version of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing.

On film she appeared in Jean Pierre Lefebvre's La Chambre blanche (1969) and Les Fleurs sauvages (1982), Clément Perron's Taureau (1973), La Piastre (1976) and The Disappearance (1977), and on television in Mont-Joye, Rue des Pignons, La Bonne Aventure, Sauve qui peut and Mon meilleur ennemi. Later she worked as a narrator on documentaries.

As a director she staged La Poupée de Pélopia (1984), Anaïs dans la queue de la comète (1985), Fool for Love at the Quat'Sous (1987), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1988), Le Pain dur at the Rideau Vert (1991), La Reprise at the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui (1994) and a 2018 anniversary production of Les Fées ont soif. Her play Marina, le dernier rose aux joues (1993) was a finalist for the 1995 Governor General's Award for French-language drama and was also performed in France; Un carré de ciel (2004) followed at the Théâtre d'Aujourd'hui. She wrote radio plays for Radio-Canada and taught text in the acting programme of the National Theatre School.

Shortly before leaving for Paris she met the filmmaker and editor Jacques Gagné, and she chose to return to Montreal to be with him. They married and had two sons. Gagné died in 1994. She named Hélène Loiselle as her model for combining a family and a stage career, and in a 2010 interview said that if she could start again she would change nothing.

Michèle Magny died on Saturday 17 October 2026 in Montreal, aged 82, after a long illness affecting her memory that had forced her to end her career. Her sister Hélène Magny announced the death on Tuesday 20 October, writing that Michèle had devoted her life to making words vibrate. Playwright Michel Marc Bouchard paid tribute to her as a woman ahead of her time. A memorial was to be announced later.

La Presse described her as an artist who marked the beginnings of women's artistic voice in Quebec, alongside Pol Pelletier, Louisette Dussault and Luce Guilbeault. Her work in Les Fées ont soif placed her at the centre of one of the defining controversies of Quebec theatre, and as a director she helped launch the stage career of Michel Marc Bouchard in Montreal. Generations of acting students at the National Theatre School learned the handling of text from her.