Marc Messier, Broue co-star and Quebec acting legend, dies at 78

Marc Messier, the Montreal-born actor who anchored Quebec's cultural landscape for more than five decades, died Tuesday at age 78. The Goodwin agency announced his death.

Messier is best remembered as one of three pillars of Broue, the sketch-comedy stage production he co-created in 1979 with Michel Côté and Marcel Gauthier at Théâtre des Voyagements. The play became the most-applauded theatrical production in Quebec history, running for 38 years with 3,322 performances and the same three-person cast — a feat that earned it a Guinness World Record in 2006. The trio delivered their final performance in 2017.

Born August 16, 1947, in Granby, Messier fell in love with theatre at 15 after reciting Hamlet's soliloquy in an English class at Collège Monseigneur Prince. "I lost my mind," he later said of that moment. "I had the impression I'd caught something." He studied theatre at the Option théâtre program at CEGEP Saint-Hyacinthe, where he met his future collaborators.

Beyond Broue, Messier became a television and film staple. He played Marc Gagnon, the fierce captain, in the hockey series Lance et compte, and Bob Chicoine in Les Boys, where he delivered the famous line about "la dureté du mental." He also starred as the womanizing Réjean Pinard in La petite vie, appeared in Denys Arcand's Jésus de Montréal (1989), and performed in multiple Bye Bye sketches between 1978 and 2018.

Post-Broue, Messier pursued roles he'd long wanted: in 2017 he took on serious drama in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, playing a disillusioned salesman. In 2021 he created Seul… en scène !, a solo comedy-theatre monologue written with director Louis Saia and Mani Soleymanlou, where he recounted his life and relationship with ego.

Messier is survived by three children: Gabrielle, Félix, and Jeanne.