I first knew Richard Jutras as a teacher. In 2022, at Triple Threat Academy, I took Scene Work and On Camera classes with him. We worked scenes in depth: search, try, go again, adjust, then return to the text and to what is actually happening between the characters.
Beyond his career, what strikes me about Richard is the quality of presence he brings to other people. He is generous with his time, attentive without being intrusive, and genuinely curious about people and what they are trying to accomplish. He also has a rare way of approaching the work — and, more broadly, life — with solid optimism, positive energy and an almost contagious sense of joy. Even when he talks about the very real difficulties of the profession, he does it without cynicism: with clarity, but also with the sense that there is always something else to try, learn or build.
A career built in the profession
Richard’s professional profile at Agence Julie Draper places his career at roughly forty-five years, with work on sets in Montreal, Toronto, Miami, Havana, Austria and Los Angeles. He is a member of UDA, ACTRA and EQUITY, and works in both French and English.
His filmography is extensive. Rather than turn this into an inventory, a few landmarks are enough to show the continuity of the work. His credits include The Tournament, Stonewall, All You Can Eat Buddha and, more recently, Dream Scenario. In The Whole Nine Yards (2000), he plays Agent Morrissey in a cast led in part by Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. In Dream Scenario (2023), he is credited as Jean, alongside Nicolas Cage.
Those are recognizable names, but they are not what interests me most about his path. What feels more revealing is the duration: continuing to work, moving from one medium to another and staying connected to the concrete realities of the profession.
The stage as much as the camera
Richard is not only a screen actor. His agency and Triple Threat Academy also document a substantial theatre career in Quebec and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Productions listed include At the Beginning of Time, Prayer for the French Republic, The Hockey Sweater, Jeanne La Pucelle, Crazy for You and Bent.
In 2022, he received a META for his supporting performance in From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea. That same year, he was nominated at the ACTRA Awards for Lifelike. He had also received two Gémeaux nominations, in 2005 and 2006, for ensemble work in the comedy The Tournament.
That movement between stage and screen matters when I think about him as a teacher. Theatre and camera do not ask for exactly the same scale of performance, but they share the same necessity: understand what you are playing, listen to what is happening and remain available to what changes in the scene.
Teaching a profession you still practise
For me, that continuity between professional practice and teaching matters. In my guide to choosing acting training, I return to a simple question: who is teaching today, and does that person still know, concretely, the environment in which the student hopes to work? In Richard’s case, that relationship to the profession is not theoretical.
I would still be careful not to turn my experience with him into a “Richard Jutras method.” That would assign him a system I have no business defining on his behalf. I can only describe what I experienced as a student.
Working a scene until it starts to breathe
In the workshops I took with Richard, the work was not about quickly finding a good way to say the lines. A scene became a place to investigate. We worked it, tried a direction, watched what it produced, then went again. The text stayed the same; our understanding of it could move.
That process helped deepen my relationship to acting for camera. In front of a lens, adjustments do not need to be large to be visible. What matters often happens in listening, in the thought before the line, in the precision of an intention and in the ability not to freeze a scene after one version happens to work.
What I found useful with Richard was exactly that working space: structured enough that we could genuinely dig into a scene, but open enough for attempts to remain attempts. I am not presenting that as a universal rule about his teaching. It is simply the concrete memory I carry from his classes.
The person behind the profession
With Richard, generosity is not limited to passing on technique. You see it in the time he gives other people, the way he genuinely listens to a question and the attention he gives the person in front of him. He can talk about the profession with precision without sounding as though he is reciting certainties; he remains open to discussion, nuance and whatever he may still discover himself.
There is also a very alive curiosity in him. Richard is interested in people’s paths, ideas, projects and lives. That curiosity comes with a deeply positive temperament: optimistic without being naïve, enthusiastic without forcing enthusiasm, and almost always carried by a kind of good humour that makes conversations lighter. It is a presence that encourages without flattering and makes you want to stay open — to the work and to other people.
That impression is echoed elsewhere. On Instagram, Triple Threat Academy describes him as one of its “incredible instructors” and says how fortunate they are to have him on the team. In a Westmount Magazine review of At the Beginning of Time, the cast is described as “uniformly fine.” Even more revealing about the man himself, in a The Moveable Fest interview about Solemates, filmmakers Mike Feswick and James Rathbone explain that they needed a performer who could bring warmth and tenderness to the role, and describe Richard as “big-hearted and lovely.” Those outside perspectives line up well with what his path suggests: a precise actor, but also a human presence that matters to a team.
“The art of inhabiting the role”
Years after we met, Richard agreed to contribute to the foreword of my book Le Souffle de la Machine. His piece has a title that connects directly with what I had discovered in his teaching: “L’art d’habiter le rôle” — “The art of inhabiting the role.”
In that foreword, he returns in part to our meeting in a scene-study workshop and to the weeks during which he watched me work. His contribution makes sense here because it extends exactly what runs through his career: attention to the actor’s work, to process, to what is built over time, and a real generosity when he chooses to share what he knows.
An experienced actor passing on what he knows
When I think of Richard as a teacher today, I do not completely separate the teacher from the actor. His camera experience gives context to the way he teaches screen acting. His stage work feeds his relationship to text and scene partner. And the fact that he continues to practise the profession himself keeps that teaching connected to living work.
I am grateful that I first crossed paths with Richard in a classroom. That is where I began to understand what distinguishes the way he teaches: an intimate knowledge of the profession, real availability to the actors he works with, and a curiosity that keeps the work alive. The more you look at his path — as an actor, stage performer, teacher and collaborator — the more the same quality returns: Richard always seems to be trying to move the work forward without losing sight of the people doing it.
Training with Richard Jutras
If you would like to train with Richard, the simplest approach is to contact Triple Threat Academy directly. Depending on its current schedule, the Academy offers Scene Work and on-camera classes with Richard.
Triple Threat Academy
7927 Newman Boulevard, LaSalle, Quebec H8N 2N9
Phone: 514-366-7927
Email: info@danse123.ca
Website: triplethreatacademymtl.com
I recommend checking directly with the Academy for upcoming dates, available levels and spaces in Richard’s classes.
