Irene Bedard

Irene Bedard is an Alaska Native actress enrolled in the Native Village of Koyuk who has played many aboriginal American characters in a variety of television shows and films. She is best known for her voice role as the title character in the Disney animated film "Pocahontas," and the cult-classic "Smoke Signals" as Suzy Song. She is known for bringing a powerful emotional presence to her characters.

Bedard was born in Anchorage, Alaska, raised primarily in Alaska, but also spent a few years as a child in Washington state. Her father was Bruce Bedard, and mother was Carol Bedard, and she is their oldest of four - Leslie Bedard, Joseph Bedard and David Bedard are her younger siblings. She is Inupiaq and Yup'ik on her mother's side and Cree on her father's side. She graduated from Anchorage's Dimond High School in 1985, and then earned a Musical Theatre degree from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bedard's son Quinn Wilson was born in 2003.

Her first role was as Mary Crow Dog in the television production, "Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee," which depicted the 1970s stand-off between police and aboriginal Americans, many of the Pine Ridge Reservation, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. She received a Golden Globe nomination for the role. Besides the first Disney Pocahontas movie, she also voiced the sequel "Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World." Bedard was the physical model for the character. She appeared in a different take of the Pocahontas story in Terrence Malick's 2005 film "The New World," as Pocahontas' mother Nonoma Winanuske Matatiske. In 2005 she was cast in the television mini-series Into the West, portraying the half-Lakota, half-white Margaret "Light Shines" Wheeler. In 2011 Bedard portrayed the Messenger in the Academy Award-nominated film, "Tree of Life." In 2018, Bedard reprised her voiced role of Pocahontas for Disney's "Ralph Breaks the Internet."

Her television roles span from 1995, including Stephen Spielberg's "Into the West," "The Spectacular Spider-Man," "Longmire," "Westworld," and "FBI: Most Wanted." She has performed in two Stephen King series, 2017's "The Mist" as Kimi Lucero, and 2020's "The Stand" as Ray Rentner. In the 2017 she portrayed the future Co-President of the United States for the Jay-Z music video "Family Feud," directed by Ava Duverney.

Bedard's decades of creative work includes singing, theatre, spoken word, producing television and movies, speaking, and teaching. She fosters a passion of many creative disciplines, and is a great lover and adopter of non-human animals. Bedard was chosen in 1995 as one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People." She's served on the American Indian Enterprise and Business Council to the United Nations and is involved in frequent activist work around the environmental and aboriginal issues.