(2 of 2)
Believable Appetite. Anne of the Thousand Days, for example, is a costumer's spectacle, filled with wind and hung with tinsel. It is Bujold who renders the erotic appetite of Henry VIII believable. Anne is no standard prima donna marking pentameters until her next big speech. She is a vain coquette who is first delighted with her body when it attracts the King, then distressed and finally destroyed by it when, as Queen, she fails to produce the necessary male heir. Her doomed wail, "Oh my God, the King is mad!" almost redeems the whole overblown epic. Yet it is Bujold's very sexuality that makes her question the validity of her role as a chaste but tantalizing nymphet in the early scenes. "I don't believe that a girl like Anne Boleyn and a man like Henry can be all that time without touching each other," she says. "I am sure there was heavy petting going on."
Love of Camera. Somewhere along her way, Geneviève broke with the past; she became a lapsed Catholic. In 1967, she married a divorced Protestant, Director Paul Almond. In Almond's highly personal new film, The Act of the Heart, she stars as a St. Joan-like naïve who falls fatally in love with an Augustinian priest (Donald Sutherland). The Almonds live quietly with their 20-month-old son Matthew in a rambling house overlooking Montreal, one mile from the home of Geneviève's father, who still drives his city bus on its appointed daily rounds.
It is all very, very arranged and solide, like her opinions: On minis v. midis: "I dress in whatever way excites the man I'm with." On movies: "I confess it, I love the camera. When it's not on me I'm not quite alive." On acting: "As soon as they say 'Action' I can smell in the first two seconds whether I am going to get on the wave or not. And if you don't get on you have this disastrous feeling, I can tell you—it's like love without climax." On Women's Liberation types: "I think they're all warped or something."
Though flattering offers are made weekly, she remains uncommitted to a single project. Despite her firm opinions on everything else, she seems not to have made up her mind about herself. "I have signed no contract with anyone," she says. "I don't know where to go next or how to get there." But she is not likely to hesitate long when someone finally points the way. "I like being told what to do," says Geneviève Bujold. "I wish someone would tell me what to do."