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Jessica Pare Profile |
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Birth Date: December 5, 1982
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Birth Place: Montréal, Québec, Canada
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Birth Name: Jessica Pare
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Height: 5'9"
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Biography |
Jessica Paré is a Canadian film and
television actress.
Paré was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the daughter of
Anthony Paré, the head of the education department at McGill
University, and Louise Mercier, a conference translator. She
grew up in the Montreal suburb Notre-Dame-de-Grâce and has
three brothers. Paré is bilingual, speaking both English and
French. Her parents were both actors, her father toured with
a theatre company and was a drama teacher, her mother acted
in amateur productions. As a child, Paré would watch her
father at rehearsals; when helping him learn his lines for
The Tempest, Paré became interested in acting herself. Paré
attended Villa Maria, a private catholic girl's high school
in Montreal. She played Jesus in a production of Godspell
there and also studied drama at TheatreWorks. She appeared
in over half a dozen amateur theater productions as a
teenager, including a role as Maid Marian in Robin Hood.
Paré landed a small role in Bonanno: A Godfather's Story, a
mafia TV movie, during her last year of high school, which
convinced her to pursue acting as a career. She also found
small roles in an episode of the horror/teen TV series Big
Wolf on Campus and in the French film En Vacances in 1999.
She dropped out of the fine-arts program at a Montreal
college and pursued acting for two years. After auditioning
for a bit part for the independent film Stardom (2000),
director Denys Arcand chose Paré to star in the film. She
played a naive ice hockey player propelled to international
stardom as a supermodel, co-starring with Dan Aykroyd; the
role paralleled her own involvement with the film. The
comedic satire closed the 2000 Cannes Film Festival with
mixed reviews from critics. That year, Paré was voted one of
the 25 most beautiful people in Canada by a Canadian
magazine, a title she didn't take very seriously.
Paré next appeared in Lost and Delirious (2001), starring
opposite Piper Perabo, in a story of two young lovers set in
a girls' boarding school. The film, the English-language
debut of director Léa Pool, debuted at the Sundance Film
Festival to positive reviews. In 2002, Paré appeared in the
miniseries Random Passage, set in Newfoundland in the 1800s,
based on a series of award-winning novels by Bernice Morgan.
Also that year, she appeared in the miniseries Napoléon as
the emperor’s mistress, in Bollywood/Hollywood playing a pop
singer, and starred in the girl gang thriller Posers. Paré
next appeared in the CTV miniseries The Death and Life of
Nancy Eaton (2003), in the title role of murdered heiress
Nancy Eaton.
In 2004, Paré made her Hollywood film debut in the feature
Wicker Park, as Josh Hartnett's fiancee, directed by Paul
McGuigan. Paré also starred in the TV miniseries Lives of
the Saints (2004), with Sophia Loren and Kris Kristofferson,
set in the 1960s. Also in 2004 was the mockumentary See This
Movie, with John Cho, and a role on The WB's Jack & Bobby, a
teen drama about two brothers, one who grows up to be
President of the United States. Paré's character grows up to
be First Lady.
In 2007, Paré shot the TV pilot, Protect and Serve, with
Dean Cain. She also shot the independent romantic comedy,
Shoe at Your Foot, co-starring Justin Bartha, Mélanie
Laurent, and Billy Boyd. |
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Other
Information |
Her father, Anthony Paré, is chair of the Department of
Educational Studies at McGill University. Her mother is
Louise Mercier, a translator.
Jessica speaks French.
She attended Montreal College. |
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since October 2, 2008