 |
[ Printed Articles ]
[ Television Interviews ]
[ Internet Chats ] [ Bits & Pieces ] [ Personal Appearances ] [ Miscellaneous ] |
 |
|
Printed Articles & Interviews |
 |
Here, There, Everywhere |
Bruce Greenwood had been sitting unobtrusively at the back of the dimly lit restaurant.Or so he thought.
"Hi, Bruce," chirped an attractive brunette at a neighboring banquette.
They know him everywhere. From St. Elsewhere, surely, where he played scummy Dr. Seth?
"Nope, probably from Twist of Fate," he quipped.
"When I was in Cannes for Exotica, (for which he won a Genie best actor nomination) a reporter told me I was a great star in Croatia for A Twist of Fate, which was shot in Europe. "Twist of Fate is a miniseries in which I played Ben Cross as a Nazi, then Ben Cross was Ben Cross, then I was his Jewish son."
Say what?
"What's to explain?": he asked in mock astonishment. "It was ill-conceived and bizarre."
He abruptly picked up on the interviewer's research materials, in which one reviewer lauded his "matinee idol good looks."
"Oh, that's an old review," he said dismissively.
Not so old. Barely two months off the presses.
Greenwood looks very good. Especially in comparison to his Exotica persona Francis, a tax auditor devastated by the death of his daughter and subsequently becomes fixated on a stripper who performs à la school girl.
No, he and his wife, Susan, "a perennial student," don't have any kids. He didn't draw upon personal parental experience to evoke his anguish.
"It was a harsh little journey," he admitted over a vegetarian dinner of soup, salad and eggplant. Exotica marks the first time he's worked with director Atom Egoyan, but he intends to again.
"It was totally unlike anything I'd played before, I'd seen or done before."
"I experienced so much I didn't intend to, waiting for that pain to come, looking at relationships in my life carefully and honestly. I summoned up relationships in my life more than I (usually) do."
Greenwood didn't pick up the best actor Genie on Wednesday night, but he didn't expect to.
There is irony in that, in Whale Music, winner Maury Chaykin portrayed a recluse musician a la Beach Boy Brian Wilson and Greenwood played a dissipated, hellbent Dennis Wilson in the 1990 TV-movie Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys, a performance singled out by many critics as Emmy calibre.
This man never stops working.
Born in Noranda, Que., 38 years ago and raised in Vancouver, he has lived in the United States for a decade, but returns to work in Cananda.
He was recently in Vancouver shooting the movie Dream Man, in which he plays a cop opposite Patsy Kensit.
He played Bambi Bembenek's husband in the TV-movie Woman on the Run, partly shot here, with Tatum O'Neal in the lead role.
He costarred in Adrift, a Canandian production shot in New Zealand and a Canadian version of The Little Kidnappers with Charlton Heston.
Last summer, he was a sudsy soap hero all in a lather over Emma Samms in Treacherous Beauties, an episode of Alliance Harlequin series.
"It's a glossy piece of fluff: let's go to Toronto for a couple of weeks and have some fun. I'm very proud to have my picture on the front of Harlequin Romances with Emma. It was very soapy."
He's no stranger to the soaps, having paid his dues on Knots Landing for one season.
His recent crop of TV movies include Bitter Vengeance with Virginia Madsen and Dazzle with Lisa Hartman.
Last year he shot the movie Paint Cans, a swipe at Telefilm. He played a frazzled filmmaker trying to wring some cash out of the agency and based his pretentious character on "a couple of guys I knew."
"In the States , I do movies-of-the week where I play the guy who looks okay at first, then turns out to be the murderer, or runs away with the wife or steals your money. Paint Cans is wacky. I end up a sad case: Ah, give him a break."
"I'd be happy to spend half a year doing offbeat, strange movies. It was an emotional watershed to do Atom's movie. I get offers to do weird stuff, more weird than interesting."
Greenwood estimates he' been doing film and TV for 11 years. He didn't start out to be an actor, he fully intended on becoming a pro skier.
"All I wanted to be was a ski racer but my one knee is meat. I blew my knee at age 15."
His father was one of Canada's top geophysicists and former chairman of the geology dept at University of British Columbia.
Certainly dad would have preferred him to be an academic.
"There was no obvious overt pressure but 'how could you do less?' was implied. As an alternate to skiing, I wanted to be a writer or a poet."
He drifted into acting during the mid '70s as an arts student at UBC. He registered for theatre because it offered "three easy credits."
He was hooked.
"I started out in theatre. To get tuition for England (the London Central School of Speech and Learning) I ended up working back in the Northwest Territories drilling for coal. I was in my early 20s and I was sick of it. One day, I got a call for a job I took on a phone in the camp trailer. I didn't see the school in England; I saw a ticket out of the boondocks."
He studied at New York's American Academy and then it was back to Vancouver and the stage. He made his feature film debut in Bear Island and moved to Los Angeles in 1983, when he was hired to do a film for HBO.
That led to a role in the NBC series Legman, followed by Peyton Place: The Next Generation and the big break in 1986, a season as libidinous, sleazy, Dr. Seth Griffin on St. Elsewhere.
His most recent series credit is the Fox-TV baseball sitcom Hardball, that didn't make the cut.
Among his movie credits: Passenger 57 and Wild Orchid with Carré Otis and Mickey Rourke. He diplomatically won't talk about the hothouse Orchid shoot.
Greenwood also has a musical side. He has a band, Heirbourne, and does guitar and vocals. He writes children's music with a friend, Norman Foote. He has a small recording studio in his house where he writes, records and has produced four hours of radio programming for National Public Radio.
"I just had to put a music studio in my home. I decided, five or six years ago, that I don't have any big vices, so why not buy recording gear every time I got a job."
He noodles on the guitar regularly, even brought it with him on his four-day stay in Toronto.
He's back in LA. today resuming work on a miniseries on The Judds.
"I'm Naomi Judd's husband. It deals with her hepatitis and ends with her sending Wynonna on her own. His name is Larry Strickland and he's got a slow, laconic, quiet quality to him. He's a bass singer, he sang for The Stamps, a quarter who backed up Elvis.
"I have to take my shirt off in two weeks so I have to do situps, tone up my boney self -- I should be hanging in the garage between a rake and a hoe."
Shirtlessness aside, Greenwood owes a lot to Harlequin, including the tuxedo he wore to the Genies.
"I bought it from the set. When I was in Cannes, I rented one from a costume shop. Cannes was incredible, starlets stripping by the pool, being chased by paparazzi. One came up to me and asked, "Can I take your peak-ture," Greenwood said in French accent.
"I thought, 'Wow, I've only been here for six hours and they want to take my picture."
"So he takes my picture and says, "Can you sign this?"
"I figured it was Polaroid. But he whips out an 8 by 10 of Dennis Quaid.
'It's not me,' I protested.
'Sure eet ees. Eeet ees you,' he kept insisting.
"So I signed it. 'Dennis Quaid.' I didn't want to disappoint him."
Exotica Genies |