Yves Jacques

Acting

Yves Jacques

Born 1956-05-10 · Québec City, Québec, Canada

Yves Jacques OC (born 10 May 1956) is a Canadian film, television and stage actor. Jacques was born in Quebec City in 1956. He studied theatre at the Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, and began acting on stage in both Quebec City and Montreal. He became more widely known to film and television audiences beginning in 1981 as a sketch performer in Télévision de Radio-Canada's annual Bye Bye New Year's Eve variety special, and soon began appearing more widely in film and television roles. To international audiences, he is best known as Claude, the gay academic in Denys Arcand's The Decline of the American Empire and The Barbarian Invasions. On stage, he is noted for originating the role of Lydie-Anne in the premiere of Michel Marc Bouchard's play Lilies. He has been in several movies by French filmmaker Claude Miller, including Of Woman and Magic and Little Lili. His fame has continued to grow with films and theatrical productions in both France and Quebec. Since 2001, he has toured the world in two shows by Robert Lepage, Far Side of the Moon (La Face cachée de la lune) and Le Projet Andersen, where he played all the roles. Since 2018, he has appeared regularly in Mathieu Quesnel’s theatrical creations. More recently, he played in Aline by Valérie Lemercier, in Maria by Alec Pronovost, and in Chloé Robichaud’s Les jours heureux. In 2022, Yves Jacques played in Martin Villeneuve's The 12 Tasks of Imelda (Les 12 travaux d'Imelda), co-starring playwright Robert Lepage and actress-signer Ginette Reno. He was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication de France in February 2001, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2009, for his performances in theatre, television and film, in Canada and abroad. He is openly gay. Source: Article "Yves Jacques" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Acting credits

The Aviator poster
7.2

A biopic depicting the life of filmmaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes from 1927 to 1947, during which time he became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate, while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The Aviator

2004

Laurence Anyways poster
7.6

The story of an impossible love between a woman named Fred and a transgender woman named Laurence who reveals her inner desire to become her true self.

Laurence Anyways

2012

Aline poster
6.6

A fictionalized biopic of Aline Dieu, a multitalented singer from a musically inclined family.

Aline

2021

Grace of Monaco poster
6.0

The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kelly's crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monaco's Prince Rainier III and France's Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.

Grace of Monaco

2014

The Barbarian Invasions poster
7.0

In this belated sequel to 'The Decline of the American Empire', middle-aged Montreal college professor, Remy, learns that he is dying of liver cancer. His ex-wife, Louise, asks their estranged son, Sebastian, a successful businessman living in London, to come home. Sebastian makes the impossible happen, using his contacts and disrupting the Canadian healthcare system in every way possible to help his father fight his terminal illness to the bitter end, while reuniting some of Remy's old friends, including Pierre, Alain, Dominique, Diane, and Claude, who return to see their friend before he passes on.

The Barbarian Invasions

2003

Hold-up poster
6.1

Dressed as a clown, the clever rascal Grimm holds up the most secure bank of Montreal and takes 30 hostages. While confusing and ridiculing the police with his strange behavior, he calmly manages to rid the bank of a fortune. But then an unsatisfied companion arouses trouble...

Hold-up

1985

Katak: The Brave Beluga poster
6.0

While his peers have all turned white, Katak is still small and grey. To prove that he has grown up and to grant the last wish of his adored grandma, Katak departs on a perilous journey to the Great North.

Katak: The Brave Beluga

2023

Let's Be Friends poster
5.5

The two friends Claude and Serge are fundamentally different in their temperament. Similarities arise only when they try to have a relationship with a woman, because both fail equally. While Claude is simply too shy to even start a relationship, let alone meet a woman, Serge is too jumpy to have a relationship. Together they go in search of the great love in all sorts of curious situations, from the self-help group on speed dating to wedding celebrations of strangers - in the hunt for the right woman, they are no way too far.

Let's Be Friends

2005

Sisters and Neighbors! poster
6.3

The story of Germaine Lauzon, a housewife who wins a million stamps which, she believes, will allow her access to happiness and a new world that she has dreamed of for so long. But her joy will make some people jealous...

Sisters and Neighbors!

2024

Me, Myself and Mum poster
6.6

How to become a man when your mother and your closed circle have decided otherwise? This is the challenge Guillaume took up. The film recounts Guillaume's tragicomic battle from the young age of eight, as he adopts the role of a girl then of a homosexual... until, aged 30, he meets the woman who, after his mother, will become the other woman in his life. Beyond this story of a heterosexual coming-out, the film tells the tale of an actor who never stopped loving women, maybe even a little too much.

Me, Myself and Mum

2013

The Successor poster
6.5

Happy and accomplished, Ellias becomes the new artistic director of a famous French Haute Couture house. When he learns that his father, whom he has not seen for many years, has just died of a heart attack, Ellias goes to Quebec to settle the estate. The young creator will discover that he has inherited much worse than his father's fragile heart.

The Successor

2023

Little Lili poster
5.6

This film, loosely inspired by Anton Chekov's The Seagull, weaves a story about sex, family and the business of making films. When the young and overly sensitive filmmaker Julien screens his new DV art-film starring his girlfriend Lili (Swimming Pool's Ludivine Sagnier) --a sexy young local girl--to his famous actress mother Mado, and her lover Brice, an accomplished film director, an unraveling of the delicate peace in their house begins. The graceful beauty Lili, who dreams of becoming a famous actress like Mado, is immediately fascinated by Brice, who gladly falls prey to her charms.

Little Lili

2003

Second Chance poster
5.7

Julien Monnier has a serious problem. Though he's a brilliant couples counselor, he can't keep a woman in his life for more than two weeks. Indeed, ever since his childhood, Julien jinxes every woman who falls in love with him. But it's not just any small jinx. It's the kind that sends you to the hospital several times a week, that destroys your professional life or that turns your friends into enemies. Julien is strictly speaking a true black cat for women. Joanna Sorini will soon learn this at her expense the day she meets him. A career that's just taking off, a love life that finally seems to be taking a good turn, all that may just change.

Second Chance

2011

Montreal Stories poster
5.0

Six stories about Montreal. 1: A young housewife from Toronto samples the nightlife using basic French. 2: The tale of a painting of Montreal's first mayor, Jacques Viger. 3: During a hockey game, Madeleine tries to tell Roger she wants a divorce after forty years of marriage. 4: A visitor to a conference on pictographs arrives at the airport, where the female customs officer steals a momento from each person. 5: As she is being driven to the hospital in an ambulance after an auto accident, Sarah recalls her life. 6: At a diplomatic reception, an older woman reminisces about her grand love in Montreal.

Montreal Stories

1991

An Eye for Beauty poster
3.4

An architect and his wife see their relationship challenged.

An Eye for Beauty

2014

A Man in a Hurry poster
6.5

The story revolves around Alain, a busy businessman who is always in a rush. In his life, there is no room for spare time or family. But one day, he suffers a stroke, which makes him lose his grasp of language and use one word in place of another.

A Man in a Hurry

2018

Traceless poster
6.3

Étienne Meunier (Benoît Magimel) is a young executive who has everything going for him. His career is skyrocketing and he is about to become #1 at work, he is married to a picture-perfect wife, has a dream home and money. To top it off, he's charming, healthy and everyone likes him and seems to consider him "a great guy". But beneath the surface, not everything is perfect. Meunier feels some pressure at work, knowing others eye his future position and he and his wife have been unable to have children so far. One day, Meunier bumps into a childhood friend, Patrick Chambon (François-Xavier Demaison) and the two resume their friendship, despite Chambon having struggled as a petty criminal.

Traceless

2010

The Decline of the American Empire poster
6.7

Four very different Montreal university teachers gather at a rambling country house to prepare a dinner. Remy (married), Claude (a homosexual), Pierre (involved with a girlfriend) and Alain (a bachelor) discuss sex, the female body and their affairs with them. Meanwhile, their four female guests, Louise (Remy's wife of 15 years), Dominique (a spinster), Diane (a divorcée) and Danielle (Pierre's girlfriend) are spending the time at a downtown health gym. They also discuss sex, the female body and, naturally, men. Later in the evening, they finally meet at the country house and have dinner. A ninth guest, named Mario, who used to know Diane, drops in on the group for some talk and has a surprise of his own.

The Decline of the American Empire

1986

Thérèse poster
5.8

An unhappily married woman struggles to break free from social pressures and her boring suburban setting.

Thérèse

2012

Duplex poster
NR

An archaeologist who has been charged with bringing a pre-Columbian statue back to France meets a journalist during a stay in the jails of South American revolutionaries.

Duplex

1991

Jesus of Montreal poster
6.8

A group of actors putting on an interpretive Passion Play in Montreal begin to experience a meshing of their characters and their private lives as the production takes form against the growing opposition of the Catholic church.

Jesus of Montreal

1989

Milena poster
4.3

Prague, 1920. Milena's father wants her to follow in his footsteps and be one of the first female doctors in Czechoslovakia, but she is determined to be a writer. She elopes to Vienna with the Jewish music critic Ernst Pollak, and starts a correspondence with Franz Kafka. She leaves Pollak and returns to Prague with her father, where she befriends and translates Kafka. As a journalist, Milena covers the 1923 Ruhr worker's strike and meets the communist architect Jaromir.

Milena

1991

The Widow of Saint-Pierre poster
6.6

In 1850, on the isolated French island of Saint-Pierre, a murder shocks the natives. Two fishermen are arrested. One of them, Louis Ollivier, dies in custody. The other, Neel Auguste, is sentenced to death by the guillotine. The island is so small that it has neither a guillotine nor an executioner. While those are sent for Auguste is placed under the supervision of an army Captain.

The Widow of Saint-Pierre

2000

Embrasse poster
NR

Hugo is an only child. A public altercation seems to confirm the rumor of domestic violence. Passionate about fashion and infatuated with beauty, this teenager dreams of becoming a couturier, like the master of French ready-to-wear Yves Saint Laurent.

Embrasse

2022