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Alberta Watson

Alberta Watson brought a cool intelligence and underlying toughness to characters who rarely needed to announce their authority. Born in Toronto in 1955, she began performing at 15 with T.H.O.G. (Theatre House of God), a local theatre group at Bathurst Street United Church. A workshop for the musical Hair led to an appearance in Hamlet, directed by René Bonnière, who would later direct her in La Femme Nikita. Her first screen role came at 19 in the CBC movie Honor Thy Father. Film established Watson as an actor willing to take on difficult material. She played Mitzi in George Kaczender’s In Praise of Older Women, earning a Genie nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and later received a Best Actress award at the Yorkton Film Festival for Exposure. After periods in Los Angeles and New York City, she returned to Toronto and concentrated on independent films. Her work in Colleen Murphy’s Shoemaker brought another Genie nomination, this time for Best Actress. Watson’s film roles show the range within her restrained, unsentimental style. She played Susan Aibelli, the bedridden mother at the centre of Spanking the Monkey, Lauren Murphy in the cult film Hackers, and Risa in Atom Egoyan’s Academy Award-nominated The Sweet Hereafter. Whether working in unsettling family drama or a heightened vision of computer culture, she gave her characters a firm sense of lived experience. Television gave Watson some of her most recognisable roles. From 1997 to 2001, she played the controlled and formidable Madeline in La Femme Nikita. During the second season, she underwent chemotherapy after being diagnosed with lymphoma; the production limited her appearances and incorporated wigs, followed by her short regrowing hair, into Madeline’s look. She later played CTU Director Erin Driscoll in 12 episodes of 24, the Minister of Public Safety in The Border, and Sarah Craven in Heartland, a performance that earned her a 2011 Gemini Award. Her recurring role as Madeline Pierce in Nikita provided a fitting nod to the part that had become such a defining piece of her television career.