From 1979 to 2017, Michel Côté and his acolytes Marc Messier and Marcel Gauthier gave more than 3,000 performances of the play Broue on stages in Quebec. A record that is not close to being equaled. Among the panoply of characters who followed one another in the tavern decor, Michel Côté interpreted some memorable figures, including Pointu (the very endearing firefighter with a mustache), the homeless Verrue, Ti-Mil and Gérard.
Michel Côté proved his status as a chameleon actor in the comedy Cruising Bar, where he played four equally pathetic seducers. Their nicknames: the peacock, the bull, the lion and the earthworm. The film, released in 1989, will have a sequel in 2008; Michel Côté will once again put on the clothes of these four lovesick men!
No, Michel Côté was not a full member of the most dysfunctional family that Quebec has known, but he was undoubtedly one of the most colorful guests in the kitsch decor of the Paré. His endearing character of Jean-Lou in the television series La petite vie (broadcast from 1993 to 1998) will have marked the spirits, and not only for his flamboyant costumes.
The television series, which arrived on Radio-Canada in 1996, spanned 38 episodes. The public was conquered from the first weeks by the writing of Luc Dionne, but especially by the tandem of actors composed of Michel Côté and Luc Picard in the shoes of two police officers from the squad to fight against organized crime. The series has also been adapted for film.
Michel Côté shone in this film by Jean-Marc Vallée released in 2005. He played Gervais Beaulieu, father of five boys, who struggles to accept the homosexuality of his son Zachary, played by Marc-André Grondin. A lover of the music of Patsy Cline and Charles Aznavour, the character played by Michel Côté alone represented all of Quebec in the 1970s.
In the role of the hardened cop and a bit macho Jacques Laroche, Michel Côté counterbalanced the one who played his hypersensitive son, Louis-José Houde. In this comedy by Émile Gaudreault, which landed in cinemas in 2009 (then followed by a second part released in 2017), the somewhat toxic father-son relationship was the source of all the gags.
