Andre Noble, Canadian Actor (Cool Obit.)
Bill Schenley
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040825/OBNOBLE25/TPObituaries/
A bizarre encounter with a common yet deadly poisonous wildflower has
claimed the life of a gifted and promising young Canadian actor. Andre
Noble died last month after a brush with monkshood while exploring an
island near his home in Centreville, Nfld.
The incident occurred during a brief visit home for a short break from
a promotion tour for the movie Sugar. Somehow, he absorbed monkshood
sap (aconite) while hiking on Silver Fox Island. Monkshood is a
sturdy, pretty plant with blue flowers that is not native to
Newfoundland, but grows widely across Canada. It is, however, lethal.
Mr. Noble's death came three years after he graduated from Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College's fine arts program in Corner Brook. His credits
included playing Isaac in the television series Random Passage; a role
in the made-for-TV movie Prom Queen: The Marc Hall Story; Adam in
Twist, a gritty update of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist directed by
Jacob Tierney; and, in what was anticipated to be a breakout role, the
leading role of Cliff in John Palmer's new feature film Sugar. Based
on short stories of Toronto writer Bruce LaBruce, the film won a
best-feature award at this year's Toronto Inside/Out: Gay and Lesbian
Film Festival and follows an 18-year-old boy, Cliff, as he leaves his
suburban home and engages on a series of misadventures with a gay
prostitute.
Mr. Noble's real-life misadventure occurred during a brief visit home
amid a short break in a U.S. promotion tour for Sugar.
"[Director] John Palmer was looking for Cliff, for Sugar, for a year
and a half," said Toronto casting agent Jenny Lewis, who had cast Mr.
Noble in Twist.
"He [Palmer] couldn't nail it. I ran into him on the street and he
said, 'Is there anyone I'm missing?' I said, 'Andre is your perfect
kid.' Andre had an ethereal presence. He was gentle, but connected. He
had presence and emotion. Star quality. He was refreshing, and
genuine, and there was a reality to him, which may have been because
he was from the East, and loved nature."
Andre Clarence Noble was born on Feb. 21, 1979, in Centreville, where
his father William has a wood-manufacturing factory. After high school
he set his sights on the theatre program at Grenfell.
"He was a lovely young lad who was unbelievably shy," said Ken
Livingstone, head of fine arts at Grenfell. "When he first auditioned
we could barely hear him. He grew over the four years. He was really
coming into his own.
"He was incredibly emotionally intense. He was constantly, constantly
looking for emotional extremes, and trying to play them truthfully.
When he did find it he was really powerful, he could connect with the
audience."
Mr. Livingstone worked most closely with Mr. Noble during his fourth
year at Grenfell, and directed him twice. "In Mutability, by the Irish
playwright Frank McGuiness, he had to sing, which he'd never done
before on stage. [Newfoundland singer] Pamela Morgan did the music,
and she worked with him. His voice was untrained but again truthful.
And he was Laertes in Hamlet, again very passionate, very angry."
Mr. Noble's death is a tragedy, Mr. Livingstone said. "Thinking of
Andre, the word sweet comes to mind. He was gentle, sensitive but not
oversensitive, and really likable. It's such a devastating loss. He
had tremendous potential. I heard him on a radio interview talking
about Sugar, and it was obvious he'd worked on his voice, he had a
tremendous future and tremendous potential and he was a genuinely nice
guy."
Mr. Noble moved to Toronto three years ago to pursue his acting
career. He co-founded The Young Company, which stemmed from the Centre
for the Arts, with "a sprawling, genetically blessed collective,"
according to Eye Weekly.
In May they performed In Between, a piece they'd also written and
produced, in a basement space on Toronto's Spadina Avenue.
"He worked so hard," Ms. Lewis said. "He had his eye on the ball, and
he took direction. And he was brave, taking on, in Twist and Sugar,
two roles, back-to-back, of young gay men. A lot of young male actors
wouldn't do it."
Sugar is described as a provocative and challenging coming-of-age
movie. Mr. Noble's character falls for a crack-addicted hustler named
Butch. The movie, in which the word sugar is a phrase used to sum up
the idea of addictive pleasure, was described by Globe and Mail film
critic Liam Lacey as set in the world of gay prostitution with a love
story about boys who are good at sex and bad at intimacy.
Mr. Noble was not worried about being typecast for his work in Sugar
and Twist, he said in an interview with Eye Weekly. "I feel like I'm a
pretty dark-natured person that takes to the material well.
I'd rather be doing this sort of stuff than TV shows or commercials or
anything like that. Playing hustlers lets you get at the vulnerable
side of what is still a sexy man. With movies like this, the men are
sort of victims of each other, which puts them on a level playing
field.
These days, I don't even believe in sexual identity; I just plain
don't."
And he joked about kissing his co-star, Brendan Fehr, who played
Butch. "He's a Mennonite, man -- what can I say? I wouldn't recommend
kissing a Mennonite."
Mr. Noble, who was a vegetarian and loved to go exploring, died on
July 30. He had met up with friends and they decided to tour Silver
Fox Island. During the hike, he somehow came into deadly contact with
monkshood. Later, while visiting his aunt on neighbouring Fair Island,
he fell ill during supper. He was taken by boat to an ambulance
waiting on shore. He died soon after.
Death from monkshood typically results from respiratory failure and
cardiac arrest; the poison was well-known to soldiers in the Middle
Ages, who dipped their arrow and sword tips in it. Monkshood possesses
alkaloids so strong that just two to five milligrams of its sap are
fatal. Sometimes its leaves are mistaken for parsley, or its roots for
horseradish. Horticulturalists recommend handling the plant with
gloves.
Like many actors, Mr. Noble acquired a vast store of quotations. One
of his favourites was from British theatre director and producer Peter
Brook: "The world is, by nature, a complicated place; life is a
complicated process, which, at the very root, is extraordinarily
simple."
Mr. Noble was predeceased by his mother, Maud. He leaves his father
and brother, Shane. A scholarship in his name has been established at
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College.
The Kentucky Wizard
>
> A bizarre encounter with a common yet deadly poisonous wildflower has
> claimed the life of a gifted and promising young Canadian actor. Andre
> Noble died last month after a brush with monkshood while exploring an
> island near his home in Centreville, Nfld.
>
> The incident occurred during a brief visit home for a short break from
> a promotion tour for the movie Sugar. Somehow, he absorbed monkshood
> sap (aconite) while hiking on Silver Fox Island. Monkshood is a
> sturdy, pretty plant with blue flowers that is not native to
> Newfoundland, but grows widely across Canada. It is, however, lethal.
>
Here is what those deadly beasts (monkshood) looks like:
http://museum.gov.ns.ca/poison/monksh.htm
http://www.patrickendres.com/cgi-bin/script.pl?op=search&keywords=monkshood&cat=wildflower
http://www.nawwal.org/~mrgoff/photojournal/1999/sum/7-23monkshood2.html
--
© The Wiz ®
«¤»¥«¤»¥«¤»
April Cool
<stra...@ma.rr.com> wrote:
> A bizarre encounter with a common yet deadly poisonous wildflower has
> claimed the life of a gifted and promising young Canadian actor. Andre
> Noble died last month after a brush with monkshood while exploring an
> island near his home in Centreville, Nfld.
There's a picture of him at
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_06.24.04/plus/pg-meet.html