JESSICA PARÉ: MAD MEN'S MONTREAL CONNECTION
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The Montreal Review, October 2010
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We do not choose when to be born or when to die. We cannot choose with whom we fall in love. We do not even choose our spouse. In the last episode of Mad Men, Don Draper fell in love with his secretary. This was a surprising twist in the movie plot for both viewers and Jessica Paré, who plays Megan, Don Draper's new fiancée.
The "Mad Men" creator Matt Weiner called Jessica only a couple days before the script came out to tell her what was going to happen in the next episodes. "I was worried that I was gonna fall down an elevator shaft first... it was pretty surprising," she commented for AMCtv.com.
28-year-old Jessica Paré is really from Montreal, and as Megan said to Don on the California hotel terrace, her father is really a professor at Montreal's McGill University. Paré is from a harmonious Catholic family, she grew up in the Montreal Anglophone neighbourhood Notre-Dame-de-Grace and attended the private Catholic school Villa Maria, which is located in the same neighbourhood. After two years of studying acting, she left Montreal's Dawson College.
Ten years ago she said for Canoe that she does not want to jeopardize her close family relations by becoming "a big star" in movies. "Fame doesn't last forever. It will all go away. I don't have a great ambition anyway. It's not like I have to get to the top. I think maybe that's because I'm Canadian. But I think that, as long as I keep being able to do roles in films that interest me, that I'll be perfectly happy," she said.
Jessica Paré acted in "Wicker Park," "Stuck," "Stardom," "Hot Tub Time Machine," "Lost and Delirious," she is also known to Canadian TV viewers from CTV miniseries "The Death and Life of Nancy Eaton" and as Courtney Benedict from "Jack & Bobby."
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