Jessica Paré (born December 5, 1980) is a
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
actress and musician known for her co-starring roles on the
AMC series ''
Mad Men'' and the
CBS series ''
SEAL Team''. She has also appeared in the films ''
Stardom'' (2000), ''
Lost and Delirious'' (2001), ''
Wicker Park'' (2004), ''
Suck'' (2009), ''
Hot Tub Time Machine'' (2010), and ''
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
'' (2015).
Early life and family
Paré was born in
Montreal
Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
,
Quebec
Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
, the daughter of Anthony Paré, former chair of the education department at
McGill University
McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...
, and Louise Mercier, a conference
interpreter. She grew up in the Montreal neighbourhood of
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (, , ), commonly known as NDG, is a residential neighbourhood of Montreal in the city's West End, with a population of 166,520 (2016). An independent municipality until annexed by the City of Montreal in 1910, NDG is today o ...
with three brothers.
She speaks
English and
French.
Her family is of
French Canadian
French Canadians, referred to as Canadiens mainly before the nineteenth century, are an ethnic group descended from French people, French colonists first arriving in Canada (New France), France's colony of Canada in 1608. The vast majority of ...
and
Irish descent.
Paré's father was an actor and drama teacher who toured with a theatre company, and her mother acted in amateur productions; her uncle Paul was a comedian with the sketch comedy troupe
Radio Free Vestibule.
Paré watched her father at rehearsals as a child and became interested in acting while helping him learn his lines for a production of ''
The Tempest
''The Tempest'' is a Shakespeare's plays, play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that he wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, th ...
''.
Her relatives include great-grandfather
Al Paré and great-great-uncles Noah and
Henry Timmins. 18th-century Irish dramatist, fiction writer, essayist and actress
Elizabeth Griffith is also Paré's ancestor through her son, politician
Richard Griffith.
Education
Paré attended
Villa Maria, a private Catholic
high school
A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., ...
in Montreal. She studied drama at
TheatreWorks and appeared in over half a dozen amateur theatre productions as a teenager, including roles as
Maid Marian in ''
Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a legendary noble outlaw, heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions o ...
'' and Lucy in ''
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe''.
Career
Paré landed a small role in the television film ''Bonanno: A Godfather's Story'' during her final year in high school, which convinced her to pursue acting as a career.
She also had small roles in an episode of the horror television series ''
Big Wolf on Campus'' and the French film ''En Vacances'' (1999). She dropped out of the fine arts program at Montreal's
Dawson College and pursued acting for two years.
At one point, she worked as a photographer's assistant on automotive photo shoots.
After Paré auditioned for a bit part for the independent film ''
Stardom'' (2000), director
Denys Arcand chose her to star in the film.
She played a naive
ice hockey
Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...
player propelled to international stardom as a
supermodel. The comedic
satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposin ...
closed the 2000
Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival (; ), until 2003 called the International Film Festival ('), is the most prestigious film festival in the world.
Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around ...
with mixed reviews from critics.
Paré became the Canadian film industry's "
it girl" following the film's release.
She was also voted one of the 25 Most Beautiful People of 2012, by ''People'', one of only a few
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
citizens to have ever been granted this designation.
Paré next starred in ''
Lost and Delirious'' (2001), a story of two young lovers set in a girls'
boarding school
A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...
. The film debuted to mixed reviews at the
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023.
The festival has acted ...
. The performances of Paré and her co-stars
Mischa Barton and
Piper Perabo were, however, widely praised. Paré appeared in the television miniseries ''
Random Passage'' (2002), based on a series of award-winning novels by
Bernice Morgan. Also that year, she appeared in the television miniseries ''
Napoléon'' as the emperor's mistress and had a
cameo appearance
A cameo appearance, also called a cameo role and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief guest appearance of a well-known person or character in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking on ...
as a pop singer in
Deepa Mehta's ''
Bollywood/Hollywood'' (2002). The following year, she starred in the girl gang
thriller film ''
Posers'' (2003), after which she appeared in the
CTV film ''The Death and Life of Nancy Eaton'', in the title role of murdered heiress
Nancy Eaton.
Paré made her Hollywood debut in the film ''
Wicker Park'' (2004). That year, she also starred in the television miniseries ''
Lives of the Saints'', was in the mockumentary ''
See This Movie'' (2004), and had a role in
The WB
The WB Television Network (shortened to The WB, stylized as "THE WB", and nicknamed the "Frog Network" and/or "The Frog" for its former mascot Michigan J. Frog) was an American television network that ran from 1995 to 2006. It launched on ter ...
teen drama series ''
Jack & Bobby'', about two brothers, one whom grows up to be the
President of the United States
The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...
; Paré's character grows up to be the
First Lady.
Paré shot the
CBS pilot ''Protect and Serve'' in 2007,
co-starred in the independent French-Canadian
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a sub-genre of comedy and Romance novel, romance fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount all obstacles. Ro ...
''Jusqu'à toi'',
and had a small role in ''
The Trotsky'' (2008), a comedy filmed in Montreal.
She filmed ''
Suck'' (2008), a
vampire
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...
horror-comedy written and directed by
Rob Stefaniuk, for which role she learned to play the
bass guitar
The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...
.
[ ''Suck'' premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Contemporary World Cinema programme. Paré was nominated for a 2010 Canadian Comedy Award for best female performance in film for the role.
Paré played a groupie in the comedy film '' Hot Tub Time Machine'' (2010). That year, she also appeared in the Canadian comedy ''Peepers'', about pleasures in voyeurism. ''Peepers'' competed in the Just for Laughs film festival in Montreal in July 2010.
Also in 2010, Paré joined the cast of the AMC television series '' Mad Men'', playing Don Draper's second wife, Megan Calvet. Paré's character had a prominent role in the Season 5 opener of ''Mad Men'', in which she danced and sang a version of the 1960 ]Gillian Hills
Gillian Hills (born 5 June 1944) is a British actress and singer. She first came to notice as a teenager in the 1960s in the British films ''Beat Girl'' (1960) and ''Blowup'' (1966). She also spent several years living in France, where she emb ...
hit " Zou Bisou Bisou". Her recording of the song was subsequently released as a download and on vinyl.
In 2011, Paré appeared in ''Beholder''. The short film, directed by Nisha Ganatra, premiered as part of the ITVS
ITVS (Independent Television Service) is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly ...
/ PBS series ''FutureStates''. She also starred in '' The Mountie'' (also known as ''The Way of the West'', and filmed under the working title of ''Red Coat Justice'' in 2009), a western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
about the North-West Mounted Police
The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory to ...
, filmed in a remote location outside of Whitehorse, Yukon
Whitehorse () is the capital of Yukon, and the largest city in Northern Canada. It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1426 (Historic Mile 918) on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's Downtown Whitehorse, downtown a ...
, and in the comedic short ''Sorry, Rabbi'', directed by Mark Slutsky.
In 2012, Paré appeared on stage with The Jesus and Mary Chain, singing " Just Like Honey", for two concerts in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...
and Toronto
Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...
. That same year, she filmed the romantic comedy, ''Standby'', in Luxembourg and Ireland; she plays the female lead, Alice. It was released in 2014.
In 2017, Paré was added to the main cast of the CBS television series '' SEAL Team'' as Amanda Ellis, the team's CIA liaison. The series was renewed for a fourth season in 2020.
Personal life
Paré married writer and producer Joseph M. Smith in 2007. They divorced in 2010.
In 2013 she was dating musician John Kastner. On March 19, 2015, she gave birth to a son, Blues Anthony Paré Kastner.
Paré is Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
. She identifies as a feminist, telling ''Fashion'' magazine, "Of course I'm a feminist... If you're not for the equal treatment of men and women, then you're a fascist
Fascism ( ) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement. It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural soci ...
."
Filmography
Film
Television
Discography
*" Zou Bisou Bisou" – single – music download
A music download is the digital transfer of music via the Internet into a device capable of decoding and playing it, such as a personal computer, portable media player, MP3 player or smartphone. This term encompasses both legal downloads ...
, vinyl
Vinyl may refer to:
Chemistry
* Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a particular vinyl polymer
* Vinyl cation, a type of carbocation
* Vinyl group, a broad class of organic molecules in chemistry
* Vinyl polymer, a group of polymers derived from vinyl ...
special edition – released March 26, 2012
References
;Other sources
Jessica Paré
. Encore Entertainment. Retrieved on October 3, 2007.
External links
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pare, Jessica
Canadian film actresses
Canadian television actresses
Canadian voice actresses
Living people
People from Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
Actresses from Montreal
Anglophone Quebec people
Canadian Roman Catholics
Dawson College alumni
20th-century Canadian actresses
21st-century Canadian actresses
Canadian expatriate actresses in the United States
Canadian feminists
Catholic feminists
Canadian feminist musicians
1980 births
American people of French-Canadian descent
American people of Irish descent