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BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Back in the 1980s, when Canadian-born Bruce Greenwood was a mainstay of the hit TV medical series St. Elsewhere, he had no illusions about the kind of character he was portraying.
In his own words, he was the program's "No. 1 scumball" -- a self-absorbed young doctor who was ruthlessly ambitious, arrogant, uncaring and homophobic. He was the sort of character that audiences loved to hate. Greenwood lived up to that early image again this year with his performance as a sleazy White House official in Rules of Engagement. And last year, in Double Jeopardy, audiences were booing him in movie houses throughout North America thanks to his portrayal of the diabolical millionaire husband whofabricates his own murder and frames wife Ashley Judd.
But come Jan. 12, the 44-year-old ex-Vancouverite will re-emerge as one of the 20th century's most fabled knights in shining armour. He's playing U.S. president John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days, New Line Cinema's new movie about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
"It was a gift," Greenwood says of the role. "This was the kind of thing you daren't hope for, really. When it came my way, I was thrilled and terrified."
Greenwood has done more than his share of nice guy roles --for example, his critically acclaimed performance as a bereaved father in Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. But movies like Double Jeopardy and Rules of Engagement have threatened to implant him in the moviegoer's consciousness as the quintessential bad guy.
That's why he's so grateful to Thirteen Days director Roger Donaldson for giving him the chance to play JFK on the screen.
The film is a meticulously detailed account of the momentous events that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war following the discovery by U.S. spy planes that the Soviet Union was stockpiling nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Greenwood went far beyond a close study of David Self's screenplay. He immersed himself in every aspect of that period: Kennedy's historic speech to the nation announcing the missile discovery; the standoff on the high seas between Soviet military vessels and U.S. ships.
"I read a stack of accounts up to my belt, and when I was too tired to read, I watched television and film footage. Then, when I was too tired to watch footage, I would lie in bed with the earphones on and listen to audiotape."
Greenwood's love for acting goes back to a year in the mid-1970s when he attended the University of British Columbia as an arts student.
The only reason he registered for a theatre course was that he thought it would give him some "easy credits."
Instead, he was bitten by the acting bug, so much so that he left university and began working professionally.
By 1976, he was one of Vancouver's busiest actors, working with both the Tamahnous and Arts Club theatres and also touring with the pop group Humphrey and the Dumptrucks in the rock musical Cruel Tears. He's married and has lived in the U.S. since 1983 when he was hired to do a movie for Home Box Office, although he frequently returns home to Canada to work.
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