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	Printed Articles & Interviews (Toronto) Star February 13, 2004

Tannis Toohey / Toronto Star

It's all a big act Canadian actor Bruce Greenwood has made a nice career playing bad guys by Peter Howell / Toronto Star Movie Critic

After playing everyone from JFK to Brian Wilson in a career spanning 20 years and 60 roles, Vancouver-native Bruce Greenwood is tired of pretending to be grumpy when he sees a camera, so he plays with his gum during a photo shoot while talking about his role as a radio talk show host in Deepa Mehta's Toronto-set movie based on Carol Shield's novel Republic Of Love. It opens today.

Bruce Greenwood's smile tightens, and his blue eyes glint a note of hostility, when yet another person makes the observation that as an actor, he makes a great bastard.

"That is the industry's perception, sometimes," he says, his deep voice measuring every reluctant word. It's not the first time in this day of interviews he's been praised for being bad, and it won't be the last.

The Noranda, Que. native frequently lands roles where he's required to stab backs, break hearts and scheme behind the handsome features of the corrupted gentleman. When directors are looking for a looker who can hide the demon within, they go looking for Greenwood. And most of them probably don't even know or care that he's Canadian.

In Hollywood Homicide, he was the internal affairs heavy out to nail Harrison Ford's good-guy cop. In the ghost thriller Below, he was the submarine skipper with secrets too dark to share. In The Sweet Hereafter, one of three Atom Egoyan films he's worked on, he was the gap-toothed town vigilante who didn't want Ian Holm stirring up no trouble.

In Thirteen Days, Greenwood was a steel-spined JFK, able to smile and lie convincingly to the press even as he stared down Khrushchev and Castro in a nuclear showdown. He gave heroism a touch of evil.

But Greenwood's most bastardly turn of all has to be in Double Jeopardy, his 1999 breakout role in which he woos Ashley Judd, marries her and then concocts a twisted plot to fake his murder and get her arrested for the crime. Greenwood was so good at being bad in that movie, it's a wonder passers-by don't make citizen's arrests of him when he walks down the street.

Still, even the toughest heels wear down after a while. Which explains what Greenwood is doing in Deepa Mehta's Republic Of Love, playing the role of incurable romantic Tom Avery. In this film, opening today, the heart he's most likely to break is his own. He's so inept at scheming, he can't even find his own car in a parking lot.

Three times divorced, yet convinced that love can still conquer all, Tom is one cheerfully confused guy. He even hosts a call-in radio show for lonely hearts.

"That's one of the reasons I did this movie," says Greenwood, 47.

"I got a chance to play somebody who's light-hearted and happy to get up in the morning. The point for me was to do something that was different from what I normally do, as well as something that had a really uplifting sentiment.

"For me, the metaphor for this movie is a flower blooming in a sidewalk. Love can happen anywhere at anytime to anybody, no matter how old you are or how young you are. Don't stop letting it happen, don't stop letting it in. Don't stop being open to it. I think anybody would be able to relate to the movie if they're honest with themselves, whether you're single or married."

Such sentiments may seem corny and a trifle calculating coming from a guy like Greenwood, especially since the movie is being marketed as a Valentine's Day date movie. Playing up the love angle means staying on message with the marketing.

But the real Greenwood is more of a softie than might be suggested by either his celluloid image or his off-screen athletics: He skis, skydives, golfs, hikes, sails and drives a pick-up as his wheels of choice.

In matters of the heart, he's a one-woman kind of guy: He's still married, 15 years on, to the childhood sweetheart he first dated when they were both 15.

Greenwood actually does believe in love-at-first-sight romance, which is what happens when his Tom meets Emilia Fox's Fay, a researcher majoring in mermaids and minoring in men.

"What I loved about Tom is he's so open to the possibility of something great," Greenwood says. "Just because he's had three failed relationships behind him, it doesn't stop his desire for something huge and wonderful."

Greenwood has managed to maintain his own sense of dogged optimism, even though his career hasn't exactly gone according to plan. Much of his early work was for television (he won a Gemini in 1995 for playing Caleb Stokes in Road To Avonlea), but it's no secret that movies were his highest ambition. If Internet bios are to be believed, he's wanted to be a movie actor since he saw Brad Dourif (the voice of evil seed Chucky in various horror films) play a small-but-interesting role in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in 1975.

"I sort of thought I'd be doing this kind of thing (The Republic Of Love) 15 years ago, which would have led to a different, less serious kind of actor. But it just didn't work out that way," Greenwood reflects.

"By the time I'd made those choices which were essentially, `Oh, great, I've got a job,' kind of choices, I'd had a string of (bad guy) things that looked as though that's what I am. Or that's what I believe."

"It somehow becomes that you're associated with what you've played as that being your de facto world view, you know? And it isn't at all. I thought, God, I'm not going to be buried under these assumptions forever. I've really got to make an effort to sidestep them even when they're offering me tons of money and stuff like that. So that's what I've done recently."

He's had a few dark nights of the soul about the topic. He wonders if maybe he'll be called to account before some celestial judge for his willingness to don a $1,000 suit and play the corporate shark or the smooth-talking cad. Maybe he really is a bastard, deep down.

"Some nights you have that kind of sense of responsibility, just lying there thinking. What am I putting out into the world? What do I mean? Why am I here? How am I contributing and does it really reflect who I am. And/or should it? Does it make a difference?

"Maybe in a way acting is preaching and maybe I should only preach what I really believe. And then you think, no, you're just an actor. You're not a preacher.

These dilemmas do crop up now and then."

Early in his career, he wasn't having such second thoughts. He was too busy working.

"I was much more impulsive. I didn't look at my future as a career even. I didn't look at it with a plan. I just worked. And I sort of ended up at the end of 15 years in television and looked back on what I'd done, and went, `Whoa - wonder when I did all that?'

"But I was learning the whole time. And I love to work. I love the process, I love being on sets.

"I have a lot of energy and I'm not good sitting around. Now I'm much more capable of focusing, so sitting around isn't just sitting around anymore. It's really, really focused."

That includes a plan to take the next few months off to indulge his music passion, if his busy movie schedule will permit it. Greenwood moonlights as a guitarist, back-up vocalist and recorder producer, and he's enjoyed considerable success of late helping his friend and fellow actor Gregg Lee Henry realize his own rock star dreams.

Greenwood met Henry in 1990, when they were both cast in the NBC show The Great Pretender, and the two have remained close. Last year, Henry hit the bull's eye with a song called "The Back Of Your Hand," off his second album, produced by Greenwood.

It was promoted by Greenwood, too, to great effect. He managed to turn country superstar Dwight Yoakam onto "The Back Of Your Hand," which Yoakam recorded and made into a hit.

"Dwight went, `I love that song man. I love it.' Long story short, he cut it, it became the single, they did a video, it went Number 1. Now the guy that I produce has a deal in Nashville. There's not an actor around who doesn't wish he was a musician."

Deejay would probably be next on the wish list. Greenwood has a natural radio voice, and he fits the role of Tom to a "T". He wouldn't mind a stint in the radio booth, taking calls for real.

But his main plan for the near future is to work on his musical chops. He's got a music software program he wants to dig deeper into. He'll play a few more shows with his pal Henry, if time and conditions permit.

"I want to take a break. I want to play my guitar. I haven't really been home for the past eight months."

He'll have to spend some time clearing the time. His movie roster for the next two years is busy, including the big-ticket sci-fi thriller I, Robot, due out this summer, in which he plays - you guessed it - a corporate bastard.

He once again plays the guy with the Brooks Brothers suit and the hidden agenda.

"It's so weird, because I'm so not that guy," Greenwood says.

"I put on a suit and I really have to go, `Let it happen, man, let it happen.' Because I'm never out of my tennis shoes."

No argument there. He's dressed for the interview in sweatshirt casual, looking as if he just pulled on whatever he found in gym bag. He noisily snaps on a wad of gum.

But that's okay. He's not trying to be anybody's role model. He seems slightly taken aback when asked if he has any advice for younger actors. He's been around for more than 25 years in nearly 70 movies and TV series, so he knows the ropes.

"My advice would be don't follow behind me, man. Make your own decisions.

"I would say don't take the short line and just try and work. Really think about what your strengths are and what you really want to do and hold out and do the stuff you think you're really great at.

"Stuff that really interests you. That draws you. I think I've made all kinds of choices that if I were to do it again, I'd do differently."

The Star