Paul Almond - Life and Career

Life and Career

Paul Almond attended Bishop's College School, McGill University and Balliol College, Oxford University, where he read Philosophy, Politics, Economics, edited the University magazine Isis and played for the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club.

At the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, he worked primarily as a director and producer, and also wrote several scripts. He did similar work in England for the BBC and Associated British Corporation (London) and Granada TV (where he created the ground-breaking documentary Seven Up!) before embarking on a career as a feature-length film-making.

In the late 1960s, he ambitiously attempted to establish a quality Canadian art cinema, with his understated and highly interiorized films Isabel (1968), The Act of the Heart (1970) and Journey (1972), featuring his then-wife actress Geneviève Bujold. At the time, these films were met with considerable critical resistance in Canada, but this unique trilogy constitutes Almond's best work to date and is a distinctive contribution to Canadian film.

After an absence from filmmaking of almost a decade, Almond was called in to direct the film Final Assignment (1980), and went on directing three more films; Ups and Downs (1983), Captive Hearts (1987) and The Dance Goes On (1991), the later featuring once again Bujold, and their son Matt Almond.

In addition to his television and film work, Almond has also produced and directed several plays on television by such authors as Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams, William Shakespeare, as well as creating his own adaptations of works by Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Henry James, Somerset Maugham, to name but a few.

In recent years, Almond has authored several novels in the Alford Saga and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001, He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of Canada in 2007. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Paul Almond was first married to National Ballet of Canada leading dancer Angela Leigh, then to Geneviève Bujold from 1967 to 1973, their son, Matthew James Almond, was born in 1968. He has since married the photographer Joan Harwood Elkins in 1976.

He currently maintains a home in Malibu, CA, in addition to his hereditary family farm in Shigawake, Quebec..