Bruce Greenwood: actor

Born August 12, 1956, in Noranda, Quebec; father, Hugh Greenwood, is a retired geophysicist and university professor; mother, Mary (Ledingham) Greenwood, is a retired nurse; two sisters: Kelly Louise and Barbara Lynn; married Susan Devlin, 1985. Education: University of British Columbia, American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Addresses: Agent -- Bob Gersh, The Gersh Agency, 232 No. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, California, USA 90212.

Career

Dropped out of University of British Columbia to make stage debut in Vancouver production of On the Job; theatre credits include: Scapino at the Frederic Wood Theatre, Vancouver, 1976; Moonchildren, Hayfever, Cruel Tears and Bent at the Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, 1976-81; A State of Grace at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1982; film and television credits include: Bear Island, 1980; First Blood, 1982; The Hitchhiker, 1983; Legmen TV pilot, 1984; Jessie, 1984; Danger Bay, 1985; Peyton Place: The Next Generation, 1985; Striker's Mountain, 1985; The Malibu Bikini Shop, 1985; The Climb, 1986; Danger Bay: Lady Raven, 1986; St. Elsewhere, 1986-88; Destination: America, 1987; Jake and the Fatman, 1987: Fatal Attraction, 1987; Another Chance, 1987; Matlock: The Billionaire, 1987; In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders, 1988; Twist of Fate, 1989; Perry Mason: The Case of the All-Star Assassin, 1989; Spy, 1989; Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys, 1990; The Little Kidnappers, 1990; The Great Pretender, 1991; Veronica Clare: Reed, 1991; The Servants of Twilight, 1991; Knots Landing, 1991-92; Perfect Crimes, 1991; Passenger 57, 1992; Rio Diablo, 1993; Adrift, 1993, Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story, 1993; Road to Avonlea: Stranger in the Night, 1994; Heart of a Child, 1994; Exotica, 1994; Bitter Vengeance, 1994; Hardball, 1994; Treacherous Beauties, 1994; The Companion, 1994; Paint Cans, 1994; Naomi and Wynonna: Love Can Build a Bridge, 1995; Dream Man, 1995; Nowhere Man, 1995-96; Dazzle, 1995; Mixed Blessings, 1995; Tell Me No Secrets, 1997; The Larry Sanders Show, 1997; The Absolute Truth, 1997; Father's Day, 1997; The Sweet Hereafter, 1997; Sleepwalkers, 1997-98; Disturbing Behavior, 1998; Color of Courage, 1999; Double Jeopardy, 1999; The Soul Collector, 1999; Thick as Thieves, 1999; Here on Earth, 2000; Rules of Engagement, 2000; Thirteen Days, 2000.

Sidelights

Bruce Greenwood enjoys telling a story about being chased by a French autograph hound while attending the Cannes Film Festival. When his pursuer insisted that Greenwood was none other than celebrated actor Jeff Bridges -- to whom the Canadian actor bears only a slight resemblance -- he took the comment in stride and dutifully signed Bridges' name. "It' s my off-the-shelf face," Greenwood joked to Maclean's.

Canada's busiest actor has yet to make himself a household name -- or face -- but this hasn't prevented him from snagging some great parts, including the lead in Thirteen Days, in which he plays John F. Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. With Kevin Costner as co-star and the film's producer, the role is bound to draw attention to Greenwood' s talents.

"It's a little overwhelming really. I started reading before the shoot and didn't stop until six months later. I watched every piece of video on JFK and listened to tapes, his speeches and conversations. I'd do that until I fell asleep. Then I'd wake up and start reading again. I realized pretty quickly you don't become a Kennedy scholar in six months," Greenwood told Stephan Schaefer of the Boston Herald.

For Greenwood, the role in Thirteen Days is a bit of a departure. It's one of the few times he has played the good guy. For three decades, his career has been built largely on playing mean and meaner. Most of his characters have been memorable for being, well, unlikable. There was, for example, the scheming U.S. national security adviser he played in 2000's Rules of Engagement, and the two-timing husband who frames his wife for murder in the 1999 action thriller Double Jeopardy, which co-starred Ashley Judd and Tommy Lee Jones. When Double Jeopardy hit the big screen, Greenwood found himself getting odd looks from women. "It was kind of weird -- I had a few women come up to me and then decide they didn't want to know me. I don't know if that was their way of saying `Nice job' or `You're just a slime, who needs you,'" he told Glen Schaefer of the Vancouver Province.

Still, the reaction was familiar. It's the same one he got from female fans when he played the slimy Seth Griffin on NBC's 1980s TV hit St. Elsewhere and the sociopathic Pierce Lawton on the prime-time soap Knots Landing.

Greenwood chalks up to coincidence the string of villains he has played. It wasn't villainy, however, that made Hollywood finally take notice of his talent. It was quirky roles in Canadian director Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter that caught the industry's attention. The offbeat films showed a vulnerable side of Greenwood. In Exotica, he played a tax auditor who creates a fantasy world for himself at a strip club. The character hangs out in the club to forget the memory of his long-lost daughter while her former babysitter takes her clothes off in a performance as a prim schoolgirl. In The Sweet Hereafter, Greenwood played a different kind of father figure, one of the many adults forever changed by a fatal school bus crash. Greenwood was a grieving small-town truck driver whose daughter was seriously injured in the accident.

"A lot of people saw that, and I could get into the rooms to audition," Greenwood told Schaefer. "Before that, I couldn't get in the room."

Greenwood discovered acting when he was taking a heavy course load at the University of British Columbia. "I thought I'd better find some course that's a breeze ... acting!" he said. "But it turned out to be more challenging and fun than those other courses, and I started working professionally right away."

He dropped out of university to make his Vancouver stage debut in On the Job. Between stage jobs, he earned a living collecting scrap metal and once thought he'd make a killing selling silly hats.

"I had designed an inflatable hat shaped like the stadium that I was going to sell to the Grey Cup fans over the weekend. When you blew into a tube, the hat's crown would expand to look like the Teflon dome at BC Place. And a whistle would go, whee-whee-wheee! Unfortunately, when 1,000 units arrived from Taiwan a few days before the game, I found that they didn't inflate and the whistle sounded more like thump-thump-thump," he told Erik Knutzen of Starweek. Greenwood and his partners ended up stuck with the hats -- and a $15,000 debt.

Though he never had to wait tables, Greenwood did earn a paycheque working in a chemical factory, a steel mill and even on a diamond-drilling rig in Alberta.

"I quit because everybody I knew was missing fingers. Teeth too. And a lot of common sense," he told Schaefer. "After two years I'd been shot to the ground hooking bales to helicopters. I was thrown from a mast once -- a 30-foot mast. I fell 20 feet but landed on the plywood roof. I'd seen the driller I was working with with a chain saw in his leg. All kinds of stuff that made me go grab that felt hat and start singing and dancing again."

Greenwood's movie debut came in Bear Island, a 1980 film starring Vanessa Redgrave and Donald Sutherland. His big break, though, came with a 12-line role in Sylvester Stallone's First Blood. Though his words were eventually cut, his name still appeared in the final credits. A casting agent saw First Blood, noticed Greenwood's name on the list of credits, and remembered seeing the actor's resume.

This coincidence helped Greenwood win a part in the popular cable TV series, The Hitchhiker. When the series ended in 1983, he was cast as the hunky co-star of Legmen, a TV show about two handsome teens who turn detective to earn their college tuition fees. The series lasted only a quarter of the season.

In 1986, while shooting The Climb, an independent Canadian film, Greenwood nearly paid for the role with his life. In the movie, he portrays Swiss climber Hermann Buhl, the first man to reach the Himalayan peak, Nanga Parbat, in 1953. On location in the Himalayas, Greenwood made a climb to 15,000 feet. Early in the shoot he broke his ankle, refused the morphine offered and continued to act, albeit with his teeth clenched. He told TV Guide's Glenn Esterly that he had to be carried off the mountain. Back in Canada, he had surgery and finished the film in the Rockies.

Though Greenwood was born in Quebec, his father's career as a geophysicist took the family around the world. They lived in Washington, Switzerland and finally Vancouver, where Greenwood attended high school and university.

In Vancouver, he played guitar in a local rock band, Humphrey and the Dumptrucks. He even tried his hand at writing lyrics, something he continues to do with moderate success in the children's music market. "I get those checks from BMI for $2.40 for 300 playings of The Man Who Ran Away with the Moon," he told Harvey Solomon of the Boston Herald. "It doesn't make me rich but it's a ton of fun."

Greenwood takes a guitar wherever he travels, describing himself as a total act who plays loud and plays often. His musical experience has helped him land some roles, including the starring role as Beach Boy Dennis Wilson in a 1990 bio-pic of the band.

Living in Switzerland and British Columbia helped him develop a taste for skiing, and he once dreamed of becoming a professional skier. "I'm a fanatic skier. In 1968, I had pictures of Jean-Claude Killey all over my room," he told John Hartl of the Seattle Times. When he broke his leg in a downhill race, then injured it five more times, however, his ski career was over.

Greenwood now makes his home in Los Angeles where his career has bounced back and forth between television series, movies-of-the-week and films. He works steadily, but knows that a job can disappear in a flash.

After spending decades doing a movie-of-the-week here, a small independent film there, and then waiting for auditions, he doesn't consider he has a job until he's in makeup. Twice, he has been cast as the lead in television series that looked like hits. In 1995, he won the role of Thomas Veil, a photojournalist who suddenly finds his identity has been wiped from existence. Nowhere Man, the story of the photojournalist's quest to find out why his wife denies he exists and his mother claims he is dead, was a hit among science fiction fans. Veil travels around the country trying to figure out who is behind the conspiracy to rob him of his own identity. His only clue is a photograph he took showing an execution in a Third World country.

"Nowhere Man plays into my own personal paranoia," Greenwood told Cinescape. "Certainly the idea that everything can be yanked away without a moment's notice is a nightmare that I've had. The fact that I'm living it (on TV) doesn't seem so bizarre to me. I've lived it in little bits one way or the other in my mind. Talk to any actor. Paranoia is the main ingre

dient in their lives." Though the series earned some favourable reviews, it ultimately failed to take off. Undeterred, Greenwood was back two years later in another sci-fi thriller called Sleepwalkers. In this 1997 series, he played Dr. Nathan Bradford, head of a neurological team whose members intrude into people's dreams. Sleepwalkers barely made it out of the fall lineup, and, like Nowhere Man, it was cancelled.

Still, Greenwood bounced back, going after -- and getting -- other roles that have made him Canada's busiest actor. His role in Thirteen Days, however, may be the catapult that launches his career to new heights.

Sources:

Online

www.greenwood.simplenet.com/bio/htm

Periodicals

Albany Times Union, September 1, 1994.
Arizona Republic/Phoenix Gazette, April 8, 1987.
Boston Herald, May 7, 1994; April 2, 2000, p. 55.
Broadcast Week, August 29, 1987.
Canadian TV Guide, May 21, 1988; October 20, 1990.
Chattanooga News-Free Press, May 10, 1987.
Chicago Sun-Times, July 28, 1994, p. 40.
Chicago Tribune, January 31, 1996, p. 7.
Cinescape, January 1996.
Columbian TV Times, May 5, 1995.
Daily News of L.A., April 27, 1990.
Disney Channel Magazine, September 1990.
Entertainment Weekly, March 24, 1995, p. 46.
Harrisburg Patriot, May 13, 1996, p. C5.
Hollywood Reporter, October 21, 1999, p. 9.
Jet, February 15, 1999, p. 60.
Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2000, p. 8.
Maclean's, October 11, 1999, p. 63.
Movieline, December 1997.
National Catholic Reporter, June 20, 1997, p. 18.
Newark Star-Ledger, December 12, 1995.
Newsday, March 12, 1996.
Newsweek, November 24, 1997, p. 73.
New York Daily News, January 15, 1996.
New York Vue, October 1, 1995.
Orange County Register, April 7, 2000, p. F11.
Orange County TV Register, September 4, 1994.
People Weekly, August 28, 1995, p.14; December 11, 1995, p.16; March 18, 1996, p.122; April 28, 1997, p.16.
Playgirl, June 1996.
Portland Oregonian, August 15, 1995, p. D1; March 23, 1996, p. D1.
Saskatoon TV Times, October 19, 1990.
San Jose Mercury, April 26, 1990.
Seattle Times, May 13, 1997, p. C6.
Sixteen Magazine, June 1984; July 1984.
Skiing Magazine, January 1988.
Smoke, January-February 1996.
Starweek, February 11, 1984.
Sunday Sun Television Magazine, July 5, 1987.
Tampa Tribune, February 4, 1996, p. 22.
Toronto Star, December 21, 1987; December 9, 1994, p. E3.
Toronto Sun, December 20, 1998, p. TV4; September 28, 1999, p. 38.
TV Host Weekly, April 27, 1996.
USA Today, February 5, 1996.
Vancouver Province, September 27, 1999.
Vancouver Sun, January 11, 1995.
Vancouver Sun TV Times, January 27, 1984; September 26, 1986; May 1, 1987.
Variety, November 10, 1997, p. 15.
Winnipeg Free Press, September 24, 1999.

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