Billy Merasty
Birthday: Born in 1960-01-01 in Brochet, Manitoba, Canada
Deathday: Alive
Billy Merasty is an actor, playwright, Cree translator, and language keeper. He was born to Viola and Pierre Merasty in 1960 in Brochet, Manitoba. His grandfather was Joe Highway, a famous caribou hunter and champion dogsled racer. He moved to Toronto at age eighteen in search for his uncle René Highway, who was at the time working for the Toronto Dance Theatre. At age twenty-three Billy launched his acting career after graduating from the Native Theatre School for aspiring Indigenous artists. He then went on to work for the renowned Indigenous performing arts company Native Earth Performing Arts. Billy has worked as a film, television, and stage actor for decades and notably played the first Indigenous gay character on television on the CBC series, Liberty Street, in the role of Nathan. Billy received the Order of Manitoba (Order of the Buffalo Hunt) in recognition for his many years as an Indigenous role model in 2010.
TV Credits
Liberty Street
Character: Nathan Jones
Liberty Street was a Canadian drama television series, which aired on CBC Television in 1995. Produced by Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler, the team behind the long-running Degrassi series of television shows, Liberty Street was an attempt to create a similar series depicting the lives of a group of young adults living on their own for the first time. The pilot film, X-Rated, aired in 1994 and was developed into an 11-episode series. The cast included Henriette Ivanans, Joel Bissonnette, Billy Mera...
Moose TV
Character:
Moose TV is a Canadian television sitcom, airing on Showcase in the 2007-08 television season. The show stars Adam Beach as George Keeshig, a Cree from the fictional community of Moose in northern Quebec, who returns home after a decade living in Toronto to become manager of the local community television station. The cast also includes Gary Farmer, Jennifer Podemski, Nathaniel Arcand, Michelle Latimer, Diane Flacks and Billy Merasty. The show's head writer is Paul Quarrington. The series was d...
Wonderfalls
Character: Jerry
Jaye Tyler, a recent Brown University graduate with a philosophy degree, holds a dead-end job as a sales clerk at a Niagara Falls gift shop. Jaye is the reluctant participant in conversations with various animal figurines — a wax lion, brass monkey, stuffed bear, and mounted fish, among others — which direct her via oblique instructions to help people in need....
No Price Too High
Character:
The Canadian contribution to World War Two was extraordinary in scale and variety. More than one million people, out of nation of just eleven million, volunteered to serve. To transform a small, virtually unequipped military into a powerful army, navy and air force was a remarkable achievement. No Price Too High traces Canada's involvement from the prewar years through 1945, explaining the events of the war in the context of the political and military realities of the time. There is none of the ...
Acting Good
Character:
After a botched attempt to move to Winnipeg, Paul retreats back to his eccentric family in the fly-in community of Grouse Lake First Nation....
Moby Dick
Character: Tashtego
The sole survivor of a lost whaling ship relates the tale of his captain's self-destructive obsession to hunt the white whale, Moby Dick....
Relic Hunter
Character: Inuit Hunter
Sydney Fox is a professor and globe-trotting "relic hunter" who looks for ancient artifacts to return to museums and/or the descendants of the original owner. She is aided by her linguistic assistant Nigel and occasionally by her somewhat air-headed secretary Claudia. She often ends up battling rival hunters seeking out artifacts for the money....
This Is Wonderland
Character: Brian Perot (as William Merasty)
Alice De Raey is a newly minted attorney who joins the chaotic world of criminal justice in Toronto. She's exposed to the seamier side of life, the backroom deals that make the system work accompanied by the usual eccentric characters....
Diggstown
Character: Chief Thomas
Follow Marcie Diggs, a star corporate lawyer who reconsiders her priorities after her beloved aunt commits suicide following a malicious prosecution....
Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis
Character: John Cree
Fictionalized portrayal of the conflict and standoff in Kanehsatake during the summer of 1990. This major conflict between a Mohawk community and municipal, Quebec and Canadian governments was over the expansion of a golf course into an aboriginal cemetery. Based on the book by John Ciaccia (Quebec Liberal cabinet minister and negotiator) : The Oka Crisis, A Mirror of the Soul...
Cardinal
Character: Billy Ralph Northwind
Detective John Cardinal attempts to uncover the mystery of what happened to the missing 13-year-old girl whose body is discovered in the shaft-head of an abandoned mine. At the same time, he comes under investigation by his new partner, Lise Delorme, a tough investigator in her own right....
Movie Credits
Exotica
Character: Man at opera
In the upscale Toronto strip club Exotica, dancer Christina is visited nightly by the obsessive Francis, a depressed tax auditor. Her ex-boyfriend, the club's MC, Eric, still jealously pines for her even as he introduces her onstage, but Eric is having his own relationship problems with the club's female owner. Thomas, a mysterious pet-shop owner, is about to become unexpectedly involved in their lives....
Northern Lights
Character: Jacob
Hoping to leave behind troubled days in the Baltimore city police department, Nate Burns journeys to Alaska, where he takes up a quiet life as a small-town sheriff and begins a romance with spirited bush pilot Meg Galligan). But when Meg's father turns up dead, Burns finds himself thrust into the limelight of a dangerous murder investigation....
The Big White
Character: Cam
To remedy his financial problems, a travel agent has his eye on a frozen corpse, which just happens to be sought after by two hitmen....
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Character: Young Man Afraid
Beginning just after the bloody Sioux victory over General Custer at Little Big Horn, the story is told through two unique perspectives: Charles Eastman, a young, white-educated Sioux doctor held up as living proof of the alleged success of assimilation, and Sitting Bull the proud Lakota chief whose tribe won the American Indians’ last major victory at Little Big Horn....
Pocahontas: The Legend
Character: Kocoum
Englishmen come to explore and settle the new world. There they find natives who are curious about their "firesticks" and strange customs....
Battle of the Brave
Character: Owashak
In the mid-18th Century, as England and France battle over control of Canada, an epic romance between a peasant woman and a trapper unfurls...
Café Daughter
Character: Amos Horseknife
In a small Saskatchewan town in the 1960s, Yvette Wong, a young girl of Chinese and Cree heritage, struggles with her Indigenous identity amidst family tragedy in this coming-of-age film directed by Mohawk artist and filmmaker Shelley Niro. Yvette’s mother, Katherine, discourages her from embracing her Cree identity, so she explores it in secret. As she learns more about herself and her Indigenous heritage, Yvette finds a friend in Maggie Wolf, who embraces being part Mi’kmaq and encourages Yvet...
Les Légendes du Grand Nord
Character: Mawaki
A mixed group of adventurers searches for Esperanza, a legendary gold treasure, in the Yukon territory in this Jack London-based tale....
The New World
Character: Kiskiak
A drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century....
Stellar
Character: Auntie 1
Set within the fluidity of time, touch, realism and reverie. Some may call this magic realism. Based within Indigenous knowledge and way of life, this story allows two people to heal, through touch, calm, love and patience in a fantastical space that leaves the audience dreamlike and yet it is dangerous and violent, there is love....
Honey Moccasin
Character: Zachary John
This all-Native production, by director Shelley Niro (Mohawk), is part of the Smoke Signals new wave of films that examine Native identity in the 1990’s. Set on the Grand Pine Indian Reservation, aka “Reservation X”, HONEY MOCCASIN combines elements of melodrama, performance art, cable access, and ‘whodunit’ to question conventions of ethnic and sexual identity as well as film narrative. A comedy/thriller complete with a fashion show and torchy musical numbers, this witty film employs a surreal ...
The Broken Cord
Character: Frank Cree
Fact-based story of an idealistic single dad who discovers that his beloved Native American adopted son is afflicted with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and complicates his life with the woman who becomes his wife....
Elijah
Character: Elijah Harper
The story of Elijah Harper........
Aberdeen
Character: Alfred
An idyllic childhood with her mooshum and kookum, or grandparents, in her community of Peguis First Nation dissipates as Aberdeen’s hard-partying and absentee parents distances her from that haven. Now an adult, sleeping on public benches, Winnipeg-based Aberdeen is in survival mode. The last remaining stable parts of her life begin slipping away — her reliable brother Boyd is ill and gives up Aberdeen’s grandkids to the foster care system. Then she loses her ID....
It Chapter Two
Character: Shokopiwah Man
27 years after overcoming the malevolent supernatural entity Pennywise, the former members of the Losers' Club, who have grown up and moved away from Derry, are brought back together by a devastating phone call....
The Confessional
Character: Moose
Pierre Lamontagne has returned to Quebec to attend his father's funeral. He meets up with his adopted brother, Marc, who has begun questioning his identity and has embarked on a quest for his roots that would lead them to the Quebec of the 1950s. Past and present converge in a complex web of intrigue where the answer to the mystery lies....
Heritage Minutes: Queenston Heights
Character: John Norton
Mohawk Chief John Norton and 80 Grand River warriors hold off American soldiers until reinforcements arrive and the Battle of Queenston Heights is won (1812)....
The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw
Character: William Bearclaw
As MITZI BEARCLAW turns 25 years-old, she is faced with a tragic decision – stay in the big city to pursue her dream of designing hats or leave her boyfriend and return home to her isolated reserve to help care for her sick mother. Loyal to her family, Mitzi reluctantly returns to Owl Island to find that not much has changed. Her confidence and modern style clash with the sleepy, slow-paced island; the bullies are the same; the handsome HONEYBOY is still running the water taxi; and ANNABELLE, Mi...
X-Rated
Character: Nathan Jones
A man is asked by his parents to run an apartment complex they own and becomes acquainted with an intriguing hippie girl and various other people from all walks of life who live there. This film is the pilot for Liberty Street (1994)....
Stardom
Character:
A young girl is plucked from small-town obscurity and thrust into the spotlight of the glamorous world of super-models....