Festival season in Montreal is the prime time for celebrity spottings downtown. Just this week both Jared Leto and Patrick Dempsey visited to take part in some of the many spectacles taking place right now in the city.
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Montreal also has an impressive repertoire of celebrity natives. In fact, the city played a huge role in the lives of many a famous singers, actors, and polticians. We all know Céline Dion and Justin Trudeau hail from Montreal, but here are 9 celebrities you didn't know had major ties to the city:
1. Gerard Butler
The actor lived in Montreal for a short while before his parents' divorce. He was just 18 months old when he and his mother returned to Scotland.
2. Jessica Paré
The actress most famous for her role as Don Draper's second wife in Mad Men is the dauther. Raised in NDG, Paré comes from a family line of McGill professors.
3. Kamala Harris
The California senator, firebrand, and favourite for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, graduated from Westmount High School. Her political motivation seems to stem from her time in the city. At 13 she organized Westmount neighbourhood children to protest her landlord's ban on play on the lawn.
4. Corey Hart
The rockstar was born in Montreal before his family departed for a life abroad in Europe.
5. Antoni Porowski
The smouldering chef from the Queer Eye revival comes from a Polish-Canadian family and majored in Psychology at Concordia, where he was reportedly so broke he slept on towels.
6. Harry Houdini
The legendary magician met his fate in Montreal. After performing a stunt where large men repeatedly punched him in the stomach, Houdini was the victim of an attack by McGill student Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead. Whitehead beat an unprepared Houdini several times in the stomach hoping to take part in the same spectacle. Houdini's appendix ruptured and he died later that week in Detroit.
7. Florence la Badie
La Badie was one of the first film superstars after she stared in several silent films in the 1910s. Orphaned at age 3, the toddler future actress was adopted by a prestigious Montreal couple. She died tragically in a car accident at age 29.
8. Caroline Rhea
The actress who played Aunt Hilda in the cult hit television show Sabrina the Teenage Witch grew up in Westmount. Our favourite aunt will reportedly not return to the Sabrina Netflix revival. Justice for Hilda!!
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9. Jay Baruchel
The Robocop and The Rules of Attraction actor grew up in NDG.