Céline Bonnier (born August 31, 1965, Lévis, Quebec) is a French Canadian actress from Quebec. She has been nominated for four awards including Genie Awards and Gemini Awards.

Biography

Céline Bonnier was the youngest of eight children, six boys and two girls. The family was brought up in an exceptionally liberal, cultured environment by mother Raymonde and father Irénée, a public sector administrator and serving politician in the mid-1970s. Encouraged by her parents to develop her imaginative side, she was entertaining the neighbors to impromptu routines in the local playground from the age of seven, a thrill that made her decide to become an actor. Music featured largely in family life; she studied it at high school in Sainte-Foy, and can play several instruments, including the transverse flute and the accordion. She and some of her brothers had a flair for art, and she still sketches as a form of self-expression and particularly appreciates the work of the great painters. But her talent for acting led her high school drama teacher to recommend that she audition for the Conservatoire de théâtre in Quebec.

Graduating in 1987, she joined Jacques Lessard's Théâtre Repère, where she met Robert Lepage who invited her to play the part of Konstanz in his 1991 production of Les Plaques tectoniques in both Montreal and the UK. She settled in Montreal, joining the theatre group Momentum under artistic director Jean-Frédéric Messier, with whom she has worked steadily to the present day, lately graduating to her own productions (Cholestérol gratuit, La Fête des morts). This theatrical output is interspersed with renowned stage directors such as Denis Marleau and Brigitte Haentjens. Meanwhile her film career, commencing with a screen version of Les Plaques tectoniques, comprises at least a dozen films ranging in style from art-house to popular, under directors such as Louis Saïa, Charles Binamé, Eric Canuel and André Forcier.

She has appeared consistently on Canadian television in a number of dramas. The TV drama (Tag, Le dernier chapitre) earned her several awards.

Céline Bonnier has worked with Roy Dupuis as an actor on several projects, from Million Dollar Babies (1994) (TV) to, more recently, Séraphin: Heart of Stone (2002), Le Dernier chapitre (2002) (mini), Monica la mitraille (2004), and Les États-Unis d'Albert in (2005). She was also the life partner of Dupuis (for 15 years) March 2011).

In 2006 she appeared in A Sunday in Kigali set in Rwanda.