Joan McBride (actra, caea)

Inspiration for making a career in acting came when Joan saw a touring production of The Sound of Music at the old Her Majesty’s Theatre in Montreal. She was 12.

Educated at Mount Allison University and McGill, Joan married, had two children and in the mid ’70’s Joan found herself living across the street from a CEGEP that had a DEC in Professional Theatre where she enrolled and successfully completed her training three years later. Since then Joan has been a Montreal-based actor, director and acting teacher in the Professional Theatre program of John Abbott College for near 30 years.

Joan has staged successful productions including The Owl and The Pussycat, The Gin Game (directed by Montreal’s Elsa Bolam) and “Anglo! –a musical cartoon based on the hit book ”An Anglo Guide to Survival in Quebec” which she conceived and directed. This wildly successful production ran in Montreal for 2 ½ years and played to an accumulated audience of about 35,000.

Joan’s film career began in ’80’s and she enjoyed performing roles playing opposite Mare Winningham in “God Bless this Child”, as Tommy’s teacher in “Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler” and as the nurse in love with the robot in “PIN”. Since then Joan counts among her film performances roles with Benjamin Bratt in “Abandon” and Natasha McElhone in “feardotcom”.

Joan is thrilled to have been cast in two award winning Canadian films: “Cherry Fruitbread”(Laura Turek) winner of the People’s Choice award at the Montreal Film Festival 2001 and “End of the Line” (Maurice Deveraux) winner of several international awards. Joan attended its screening at the Hollywood Film on Hollywood Boulevard in 2007. What a treat!

Joan now has three grown children of whom she is very proud and two beautiful grandchildren with a third scheduled to arrive this September. Favorite pastimes are gardening (Joan does her own landscape design) and sailing on her 25-foot sailboat with her wonderful husband, Charles.