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By RITA ZEKAS
Bruce Greenwood has no vanity. He is willing to be upstaged by a chair, even volunteering to pose behind one for the photo op. He doesn't even want to look at the photo. How often does that happen? Try never.
"Just pick something whimsical and quirky, just like the movie," Greenwood says, referring to Racing Stripes, a charming family film opening next Friday. When a baby zebra is abandoned in rural Kentucky during a rainstorm, it is adopted by horse farmer Nolan Walsh (Greenwood) and his 16-year-old daughter Channing (Hayden Panettiere), who names him Stripes. Stripes grows up with aspirations of being a racehorse, which fits in with Channing's plans, who yearns to be a jockey. Dad disapproves.
Ten years ago, when last we interviewed the expat Canadian (Greenwood was born in Noranda, Que., raised in Vancouver and has been in L.A. for 20 years), he was a Best Actor Genie nominee for Exotica. We were at Lakes' eatery and he was being ogled by femme diners. He is still ogle-worthy at 48.
He had lost a tooth playing hockey and playfully flipped out the temp. When he did Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, he performed without the tooth.
Greenwood usually plays sneering villains, like his breakthrough role as scummy Dr. Seth in St. Elsewhere.
"I'm an established bad guy," he concedes. "I'm some nefarious creep who will steal your money and try for world domination." He also played John F. Kennedy in the highly acclaimed Thirteen Days and co-starred in I Robot, in which he played "master of the universe."
He played Madonna's husband in her real-life husband Guy Ritchie's disastrous 2002 remake of Swept Away, but that's another whole interview.
Ergo, Greenwood is not your go-to guy for family fare. "I approached them," he explains. "I found this movie before they found me. It appealed to me because it was entertaining and had a heartfelt message. I'd never been in a movie so uplifting, humorous and enthusiastic."
When he read the script, he laughed out loud. "I was very touched," he says. "It's about believing in who you are. And I was surrounded by goofy, crazy animals with real personalities."
There are talking barnyard animals ` la Babe including a Shetland pony, a goat and a pelican.
"My granny actually inherited a pelican," he recalls. "I just remembered this. This is an exclusive. A pelican escaped from the Vancouver Zoo she named Percy. She lived on the water in Horseshoe Bay and she had him for a while. So I have a history with pelicans, however remote."
Greenwood has three movies coming out including Capote, in which he plays Truman Capote's significant other with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the lead. He co-stars with Anthony Hopkins in The World's Fastest Indian and he did the CBS TV-movie Saving Milly.
So, how does working with a zebra compare with working with Will Smith in I Robot? "There is no funny answer," he hedges. "Will is such a fantastic guy. He's a great, great, guy.
"Working with zebras, youcan never tell when they will wander off. You are doing some important work and they think you are so boring they yawn or wet your shoe or lose interest and fall asleep." And Will Smith never did that.
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