Roy Dupuis can sit at an outdoor cafe in Toronto without being mobbed. That's a pleasant change for the Quebec actor, who is a major superstar in his home province and cannot walk down the street without being accosted by fans -- not that he's complaining.

Two movies brought Dupuis, 44, to the Toronto film festival earlier this month -- Shake Hands With The Devil, which concerns the Rwandan massacre of the '90s, and Emotional Arithmetic, which is about Holocaust survivors.

Dupuis has dubbed this his genocide year as an actor.

He's not making a joke.

Dupuis says that playing Canadian Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire in Shake Hands With The Devil was a tough assignment. It's always difficult to portray a living person, and then there's the fact that Dallaire went through hell in Rwanda.

"To portray him was a big responsibility," says Dupuis. "I developed a huge respect for him. I could feel him with me, right here, while we were filming." Dupuis holds up his hands to indicate the general's invisible presence at his shoulder.

The actor says he thinks he got to know Lt-Gen. Dallaire quite well in the course of making the movie.

"He was very generous and open with me and he told me things he doesn't tell a lot of people," says the actor.

"Yes, I feel I know this man, but, I don't suffer from post-traumatic syndrome. I can be in a room by myself," says Dupuis. "He cannot, because the silence is too hard for him to take." Dupuis says he needed months to come down from the role.

Dupuis, who grew up in Quebec and Northern Ontario, became an actor by accident. He auditioned for the National Theatre School as a favour to a friend, providing accompaniment for her audition, but he so impressed the director of the school that he wound up attending himself. He worked in theatre after graduation and eventually hit big with roles in such popular TV series as Les Filles de Caleb, Scoop and Nikita.

His film roles during that period include Jesus of Montreal, Being At Home With Claude, Cap Tourmente and Screamers. His starring role in Quebec's highest-grossing film, Seraphin: Heart of Stone (Seraphin: un homme et son peche) in 2002 made him a household name.

Well -- more of a household name.

Dupuis has since appeared in The Barbarian Invasions, Looking For Alexander, Maurice Richard and That Beautiful Somewhere, among many other projects. He'll be seen later this year in Emotional Arithmetic and The Timekeeper. He continues to have absolutely no plans to go to Hollywood.

At the moment, Dupuis is refurbishing a boat he's been working on for a few years.

The plan, he says, is to sail around the world.

"I'm leaving in two years with my girlfriend," he says, very matter-of-fact. (His girlfriend, last time we checked, is still Celine Bonnier.) "We'll sail to the Panama Canal, the Galapagos, to Easter Island," he continues. Dupuis expects to be gone five years, minimum.

And if a film role comes up?

"I can fly out to work if I have to. If I want to. Anyone can do such a voyage," he adds, "if they really want to."


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