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Greenwood, who starred in Atom Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, plays U.S. President John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days, an $80-million (U.S.) dramatization of what has been called the most dangerous moment in modern history -- when the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war in 1962 over the discovery that Russia had begun installing long-range missiles in Castro's Cuba.
Entertainment Weekly picked Greenwood's performance as one of the best of the year: "His name is John F. Kennedy, and, as portrayed -- wonderfully -- by the Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood, he seems to loom out of the past, with both his stature of legend and the present-tense cut and sweat of humanity . . ." As impressive were reports in The Boston Herald, of a screening in Washington in early December, held by President Bill Clinton's former press secretary Mike McCurry, and attended by JFK's former staffers and journalists who covered his presidency. Greenwood, said attendees, had the former president's mannerisms and bearing precisely, and stole the show from Kevin Costner, cast as presidential adviser Kenny O'Donnell. (Although he was passed over this week by jurors for the Golden Globe nominations, Greenwood's Kennedy portrayal has already been stirring early Oscar buzz in Hollywood.)
Greenwood has nothing but praise for Costner who, as producer, shepherded the movie into existence over a period of close to five years through several studios and different directors. "Kevin Costner could have played any part in this movie he wanted," he says, "but it required a star of his clout to get the movie up and running.
"There was a conscious decision not to cast highly visible people in the roles of John and Robert Kennedy, so you didn't have to get through yet another persona to get to the characters. It was very bold of Costner, and it bears out his love for America. That's his thing; he loves all things American."
He recalls being called for the audition: "It was one of those typical things where, at the 11th hour they want you to come in and audition for something. I happened to be going to New York with my wife around that time anyway. So, I asked, 'What's the part?' and they said, 'JFK.' And I said, 'You got to be kidding.'
"I scrambled, and I pulled some sound files off the net so I could do the Kennedy voice and I did an audition that was really pretty broad, a kind of finger-painting version of the character. Apparently it was close enough to the stadium that they let me come back and try it a couple more times."
The lanky, square-faced actor, born 44 years ago in Noranda, Que., has played in dozens of television series and movies in the past 15 years. He credits his relative anonymity as his greatest advantage in the acting profession.
In person, he's warm and laid-back, dressed this day in work boots and jeans with a jacket, looking more like the blues musician he occasionally is (he has a home studio and writes songs) than a California actor. After 15 years in La-La Land, his manner is still definitely Canadian, self-deprecating and free of hype.
Greenwood has spent his life on both sides of the 49th parallel. Though born here, he spent much of his childhood in Washington (where his geophysicist father was a university professor). High school and college years were spent in Vancouver, where he graduated from the University of British Columbia. After working in Vancouver theatre for the greater part of a decade, mostly at the light-and-bright Arts Club Theatre, he made the move to Los Angeles in 1983. Among his many TV roles, he's probably best known as the conniving Dr. Seth Griffin on St. Elsewhere.
But he's the first to admit that most of the work he has done, on numerous TV series and miniseries, "has probably fallen under the critical radar." Two exceptions are the films he did for Canadian director Atom Egoyan, Exotica (1994) and The Sweet Hereafter (1998), Egoyan's biggest hits. In both films, the Greenwood character seems, typically, deceptively normal (he describes his face as "off the shelf") but with dark, even lethal, undercurrents.
In the complex Exotica, Greenwood played a man obsessed with a schoolgirl lap dancer (Mia Kirshner). Near the end of the movie, the audience discovers the true nature of that relationship, and the man's personal damage. In The Sweet Hereafter, he's a working-class father who loses his children in a bus accident. Both are tragic, deep roles that show depths his television work never hinted at.
The Sweet Hereafter, which had two Oscar nominations, "was seen by everyone in the movie industry, and just being associated with work of that quality made a big difference for me."
That didn't automatically push him into major movies ("The studios still want recognizable faces on the posters"), but it did open doors. After Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, he was picked by director Bruce Beresford to play Ashley Judd's dirty rotten scoundrel of a husband in the thriller Double Jeopardy. Greenwood describes that film as "light stuff, a real blockblustery kind of Hollywood movie, but fun to do." Roles in movies such as Here on Earth and Rules of Engagement, the last with Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones, quickly followed.
He says he hopes Thirteen Days works "as that relatively rare combo of a big polished Hollywood movie that's also smart." To prepare, he took the direct route: an absurd amount of research.
"Given how Americans feel about Kennedy, you'd be at your peril not to know everything you could. I have a large library of books, just on that two-week period, all which I've read twice. I've watched all the archival footage of him to the point where I essentially know every frame. I kept researching, before and right through the shooting."
He also had long phone conversations with Steven Culp, who plays Robert F. Kennedy, where they worked on matching their version of the Kennedys' Boston accent.
"The one thing that I kept coming back to was one film clip of Kennedy just listening. Not even talking. Not even moving. Just listening. I'd often do that, just before doing a scene. It spoke to me, and it would be silly for me to try to articulate how, but it gave me a feeling that brought me to him."
For about a half-day, Greenwood even tried wearing a back brace such as Kennedy wore, as a way of showing how his dignified posture was connected to his chronic pain. "The problem was that it cut me in half. I was really looking forward to it, so I could say, 'And for that role, I had to wear a back brace.' But it bothered my breathing, so I chucked it."
When it comes down to the final results, Greenwood takes the compliments with a dose of skepticism: "No actor can 'get' someone like Kennedy. I grew to believe how great a figure he was through my research. He's a huge vessel, and you're just not going to fill it. I wish the movie was six hours long and we could have shot it in two years. If you stacked every actor who's ever played Kennedy side-by-side, you just wouldn't come close to 'getting' him."
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