Out of the spotlight | Marie Eykel combines her life in the present

The moment of a conversation about their career, the passage of time and the world around them, The Press takes news of personalities beloved by Quebecers, who now live farther from the spotlight.

Dominic Late
The Press

It’s confirmed: meeting Marie Eykel, hearing her voice, provokes a cascade of sweet memories, those of a time when we came home from outside with frozen feet, just in time to Master key. She opens its door to us with all the warmth, all the liveliness that we have been imagining for more than 30 years.

“The last four years have been pretty rock’n’roll. I who thought I was immortal, I faced my fragility, ”says the 73-year-old actress, in the living room of her bright condo, a few steps from Jarry Park. Four rock’n’roll years? After going through breast cancer (quickly contained in 2018), Marie Eykel had both knees replaced, as well as a hip. Two and a half years ago, half of her face would sag, without warning, within an hour. Diagnosis: Bell’s palsy, a sudden illness from which she has little apparent after-effects.

She backpedals. “Actually, it may have come from my father!” I hated his bad mood so much that I said to myself: “I will never be like that.” »

Fun with Mary

Marie Eykel begins her life as an artist when cultural Quebec is living through “glorious years”, where so many things are still to be built, and therefore to be dreamed of. She took part in Paul Buissonneau’s La Roulotte theater and co-founded the Groupe de la Veillée in 1974 with other young actors, including Gabriel Arcand and Julien Poulin. What kind of shows did the troupe present? She smiles. “It was kinda bare stuff, a lot bare, with water, with hay. “Experimental theater, what.

Which probably partly explains why the beatlesque success of Master key shook her up to this point: you don’t study Grotowski (an influential Polish director) dreaming of one day being assailed by strangers on the sidewalk. “It bothered me not to be able to go anywhere without being arrested”, she recalls, hastening to specify that to have been able to live from her art is an incredible opportunity, and that these intrusions do not were never the lot of children, but of their parents. During our hour of conversation, his words will be constantly woven with deep gratitude and pure candor. “I had the impression of having become a public good, that one could take possession of me. »

She had the hope, after saying goodbye to her chicks, of resuming her career in the theater, which Robert Lepage will allow her (briefly). In 1998, Marie Eykel replaced Marie Brassard for three months in the seven hours of the play-river The Seven Branches of the Ōta RiverAustralia and New Zealand.

“I knew Robert was in Paris, so I left for France, but when I arrived he had already left, I think he was putting on an opera in Stockholm. But I spent the week with the gang of seven branches, I went to see the show every day, I went out with them afterwards. When Mary [Brassard] had to be replaced, everyone said: “Heille, we had fun with the other Marie.” »

At the end of the line, Robert Lepage speaks of Marie Eykel as a “well-kept secret”. “It was a lot of fun working with her, because I had never seen her play in anything other than Master keyand she could not express in Master key all of her acting shades. So I think it was liberating for her to come into a gang that works a lot on improvisation. We discovered a whole tragic side to her. As an actress and as a human being, Marie has many colors. »

“I have my share of responsibility,” says the main interested party about her absence from the stages and the screens. Could she have struggled more to find roles? No doubt, she admits. Tired of waiting for the phone to ring, she returned to the school benches at the turn of the 2000s (at Concordia) and became an art therapist, a job she practiced in particular with groups of poor women in Hochelaga. .

Not flat

On Marie Eykel’s coffee table: a novel by Emmelie Prophet. What is she listening to these days? Klo Pelgag. His face lights up.

Taking an interest in the world around her seems as natural to her as taking a breath, although she is visibly aware of the risk that anyone who has the luxury of aging has to unlearn to question themselves. During the most recent municipal elections, she offered her support to Laurence Lavigne Lalonde (now mayoress of the borough of Villeray–Saint-Michel–Parc-Extension), then to Valérie Plante.

The former Plateau resident “hated Luc Ferrandez a lot,” she says, bursting out laughing. “But slowly, I got used to the idea that there are things that have to change, that we can’t continue to use our tanks as before. I walked. »

What does she think of the fate that our society reserves for the elderly? “I don’t know if I’m right to say that, but I think that old people should first take charge of themselves, stop letting themselves be organized by others, live in denial of the death. Say what you want and what you don’t want, prepare for your old age before you are no longer able to do so. »

Kayaking, swimming, cross-country skiing, her outings to the theater and her young friends oxygenate her daily life, she rejoices. “I feel very lucky that people from other generations want to be my friends. There are long stretches where we no longer remember our age difference. We talk about politics, literature, we’re just humans meeting. Being flat has no age, anyway. ” That’s it ! And me, the people I want to meet, it’s not flat! »

If she refuses to utter the word retirement – ​​she plays a supporting role in Guillaume Lambert’s next film, niagara –, Marie Eykel only says yes to proposals that really delight her. The team ofLive from the universe called her in recent years to offer the gift of her presence to two “not flat” representatives of the generation Master key : Yannick Nézet-Séguin and Farah Alibay.

“What wonderful meaning it gives to my life to have been able to sow small seeds in the hearts of so many people who are now generous and wonderful adults! One of the key phrases of Master key, it was: “I am able.” And today, we see it: you young people don’t wait for things to happen to you thinking that everything is due to you. You organize yourself to succeed. You are dazzling. You are capable. »