Michel Côté
Le Dernier tunnel/The Last Tunnel

Michel Côté, 54, is up for his role in Eric Canuel’s Quebec suspense thriller Le Dernier tunnel. Côté stars as real-life bank-robber Marcel Talon, who in 1993 talked four other felons into digging an underground tunnel to a Bank of Montreal vault.

Côté, whose performance in Tunnel earned him a Jutra nom for best actor, was last nominated in the Genies’ best actor category back in 1989 for the hit comedy Cruising Bar, in which he played four different characters on the make one Saturday night. Côté has been nominated for nine Gemeaux Awards and won four times: twice in 1999, for best actor in Omertà: le dernier des hommes d’honneur and supporting actor in the teleroman La Petite vie; and for lead roles in Bye Bye (1987) and T’es belles Jeanne (1989).

His feature film credits also include prominent roles in Gabriel Pelletier’s La vie après l’amour, Éric Tessier’s Sur le seuil, André Forcier’s Au clair de la lune and Yves Simoneau’s 1989 French-language sci-fi feature Dans le ventre du dragon, which also stars fellow nominees David La Haye and Roy Dupuis.

Côté can next be seen in the unique family drama C.R.A.Z.Y. by director Jean-Marc Vallée, with whom Côté previously collaborated on the drama Liste noire (1995).

Roy Dupuis
Mémoires affectives/Looking for Alexander

Roy Dupuis’ nomination for Mémoires affectives is one of six for the film, a drama in which Dupuis plays Alexandre Tourneur, a man who awakens from a coma with no memory. Strange images start to haunt him as he tries to confront his past life.

At 41, Dupuis, winner of this year’s best actor Jutra, can add this nod from the Academy to several others he has received, including two Genie nominations: for lead in Cap Tourmente (1993) and supporting in the blockbuster epic Séraphin: Un homme et son péché (2003). He won a Gemeaux in 1991 for his work in Les filles de Caleb, and received noms for the series Scoop II (1993) and the mini Le dernier chapitre: la vengeance (2003).

One of Quebec’s most prolific actors, Dupuis’ other credits include Being at Home with Claude (directed by Nouvelle-France helmer Jean Beaudin), Denys Arcand’s Genie-winning Jésus de Montréal and Les invasion barbares, and seven-time 2005 Genie nominee Monica la mitraille (Shotgun Molly), directed by Pierre Houle.

A native of Abitibi, QC, Dupuis more recently starred in the English-language feature Manners of Dying (based on a Yann Martel short story) and the Quebec box-office hit C’est pas moi, c’est l’autre.

David La Haye
Nouvelle-France

David La Haye, 38, is the only one of this year’s best actor nominees who has claimed the Genie prize before. His performance as François Le Gardeur in Jean Beaudin’s epic period drama copro Nouvelle-France gives him his third nomination. La Haye plays Le Gardeur, a trapper in 18th century Quebec who rejects his father’s inheritance after learning the family patriarch was involved in some shady dealings that could contribute to the fall of New France.

La Haye was also up for best actor at this year’s Jutras. In 1996, he won the best actor Genie for his role in L’Enfant d’eau as a mentally challenged young man who saves a girl from drowning following a plane crash, and who waits to be rescued with her on a desert island. He was nominated again in 2001 for his role as a photographer who tells people what they want to hear in André Turpin’s Genie-nominated Un crabe dans la tête.

He was also shortlisted for Gemeaux Awards for Blanche and Montréal P.Q. (both in 1994), Marcel poursuivi par les chiens (1996) and Omertà II: la loi du silence (1998). His feature credits also include Richard Donner’s Timeline, John Duigan’s Head in the Clouds and François Girard’s Genie winner The Red Violin.

Ian McKellen
Emile

Born in Burnley, Eng., Sir Ian McKellen receives his first Genie nom for his role in Carl Bessai’s Emile, the third film in the director’s ‘Identity’ trilogy (preceded by 1999’s Johnny and 2001’s Lola). McKellen plays the aging Emile, who is called out to the West Coast to accept an honorary degree at a university and takes time to reconnect with his only remaining relatives – his niece Nadia (Deborah Kara Unger) and her daughter. He hopes they can help him make sense of his troubled past.

The 65-year-old McKellen is well known to mainstream moviegoers for his role as the villainous Magneto in X-Men and sequel X2 and his portrayal of the wizard Gandalf in the phenomenally popular Lord of the Rings trilogy. He has been nominated for two Oscars: for best actor in the period drama Gods and Monsters (1998) and for best supporting actor in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).

Emile was shot while McKellen was in Western Canada working on X2. He agreed to give his X2 days off to Bessai’s project, and took a significant pay cut to portray Emile.

Nick Stahl
Twist

The Academy jury has given Hollywood actor Nick Stahl his first nom for Jacob Tierney’s Twist, a radically updated version of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. Best known to audiences as the grown-up John Connor in the high-octane action flick Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Stahl stars as Dodge (the Artful Dodger), adding his own stamp to the dark adaptation. In this version, Dodge leads orphan-turned-street-kid Oliver (Joshua Close) through a seedy world of drugs and prostitution.

Stahl and Tierney are close friends and former roommates. Their feature screened at the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival and was the only North American film invited to screen at the International Critics’ Week portion of the 2003 Venice Film Festival.

A Texas native, Stahl, 25, is no stranger to disturbing films. In the 2001 Oscar nominee In the Bedroom, he plays a young man in an affair with an older woman that turns to tragedy. He has also appeared in Larry Clark’s controversially violent Bully (2001), and currently stars in the surreal HBO original series Carnivale. He will next be seen in the star-studded comic-book adaptation Sin City, codirected by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez.

Playback picks
* Roy Dupuis: PV, MD, LB * Nick Stahl: IE
* Michel Côté: MH, SD