Ensemble Bios
Claire Jullien
Ms Claire Jullien returns for her fourth season at the Shaw Festival in Present Laughter and Hedda Gabler. The last time Claire graced the stages of the Shaw Festival, she appeared in the title role of Candida, and as The Lady in On the Rocks, both by Festival namesake Bernard Shaw. Claire’s previous Shaw credits include Barbara Villiers, the Duchess of Cleveland in Bernard Shaw’s In Good King Charles’s Golden Days; in the multiple roles of Leonora, Jane and Stella in Ways of the Heart; as Lois in the North American premiere of Githa Sowerby’s The Stepmother; and as Moya in Terence Rattigan’s After the Dance.
Claire spent ten seasons at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where she played many of Shakespeare’s young women including: Desdemona in Othello, Imogen in Cymbeline, Cressida in Troilus and Cressida, Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, Miranda in The Tempest, and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale. She also played leading roles in The Triumph of Love, No Exit, Peter Hinton’s The Swanne: Part I, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Inherit the Wind, The Importance of Being Earnest, Pride and Prejudice, Equus and Little Women. A member of the John Sullivan Hayes Young Company, Claire was honoured to receive the John Hirsch Award in 1997.
Other theatre credits include Cordelia opposite Christopher Plummer’s King Lear at New York City’s Lincoln Center; Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, Einstein’s Gift, The Turn of the Screw and Miracle on 34th Street for The Grand Theatre; Test Drive for Thousand Islands Playhouse; Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Festival of Classics; Blithe Spirit, An Inspector Calls and The Hound of the Baskervilles for Theatre Aquarius; The Homecoming for Manitoba Theatre Centre; and Beauty and the Beast for Theatre New Brunswick.
A participant in many CBC radio recordings of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s productions, Claire’s film and television credits include Canada: A People’s History (CBC Television) and the feature film Elizabeth Rex (Rhombus Media).
Claire is a proud alumnus of the University of Windsor from which she holds a BFA in Acting. In 2005, she became the very first recipient of the Odyssey Award.
Claire resides in Niagara-on-the-Lake with her husband, fellow Shaw ensemble member, Thom Marriott and their two children, Liam and Anwen.