ADRIENNE CLARKSON. Born in Hong Kong, 10 February 1939. Educated at Trinity College; University of Toronto, B.A., 1960, M.A., 1962; Sorbonne in Paris, France, 1963-64. Lecturer, University of Toronto, 1964-65; host and interviewer, Take 30, 1965-75; host, Adrienne at Large, 1975; host, The Fifth Estate, 1975-82; appointed Agent-General, France, 1982-87; producer and host of her own TV programs, since 1988; president and publisher, McClelland and Stewart, 1987-88; publisher, Adrienne Clarkson Books, McCelland and Stewart, since 1988. Honorary Degrees: Dalhousie University, Lakehead University, Acadia University. Recipient: Gordon Sinclair Award, 1979; four ACTRA Awards, Order of Canada, 1992; Gemini Award, 1993.

TELEVISION SERIES

1965-75 Take 30
1975 Adrienne at Large
1975-82 The Fifth Estate
1988- Adrienne Clarkson's Summer Festival (became Adrienne Clarkson Presents)

TELEVISION SPECIAL

1992 Artemisia

PUBLICATIONS

A Lover More Condoling. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968.

Hunger Trace. New York: William Morrow, 1970.

True to You in My Fashion. Toronto: New Press, 1971.

 

See also Fifth Estate

 

 

   

Adrienne Clarkson has been a television personality and major cultural force in Canada for some twenty-five years. She began her career in broadcasting in 1965, as a book reviewer on CBC-TV. She then became interviewer and host of the long-running CBC daytime magazine show Take Thirty. After ten years there, she spent seven years as host of The Fifth Estate, another long-running magazine program, this one in prime time.

In 1982 Clarkson was appointed Agent General for Ontario in France, a high-level government position in which she promoted the province and acted as a cultural liaison between the two countries. When she returned to Canada in 1987, she was named president and publisher of McClelland and Stewart, one of Canada's most prestigious publishing firms, where she still maintains her own imprint--"Adrienne Clarkson Books." At the same time, she resumed her work in television as host and executive producer of her own CBC program--Adrienne Clarkson's Summer Festival--in 1988. Its successor, Adrienne Clarkson Presents, is a prime-time cultural affairs series on which Clarkson offers profiles of Canadian and international figures from the worlds of opera, ballet, folksinging, and the other arts.

Despite the variety of her work in journalism, news, the arts, and cultural policy, Clarkson is perceived as an elitist. For twelve years, she has been lampooned by Canadian comics such as the Royal Canadian AirFarce and Double Exposure. In one skit, a haughty, modulated voice introduces itself, "I'M Adrienne Clarkson...and YOU'RE not..." Because her most recent programs have been arts oriented and she has been involved in arts activities and posts of distinction, she is seen as having limited commercial appeal. Indeed, like most arts programs, hers do not garner high ratings but are highly regarded by critics.

Clarkson has won numerous television awards, including three Association of Canadian Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) awards for Take Thirty and The Fifth Estate. In 1993, she was the recipient of a Gemini Award (which succeeded the ACTRAs as the national television awards) for Best Host in a Light Information, Variety, or Performing Arts Program for Adrienne Clarkson Presents.

In 1992 Clarkson wrote, produced and directed her first film, a full-length drama/documentary for television, called Artemisia, about the 17th-century Italian painter, Artemisia Gentileschi, whose rape by an artist friend of her father's informed her work. Clarkson was passionately involved in her production which was premiered at the 1992 Toronto International Film Festival and was then aired on Clarkson's series.

-Janice Kaye