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This year's gala opening of the Vancouver International Film Festival was more than another movie-opening for Bruce Greenwood.
It was a homecoming. The opening-night Being Julia is the latest movie featuring the Vancouver actor, who now lives in Los Angeles.
"Actually, I've never come to a big fancy opening of anything I've done here," says Greenwood. "It was nice to share the party with people I love and family."
Greenwood, who graduated from Magee secondary, left the city in the early 1980s and went on to acclaim, starring in such films as Double Jeopardy, The Sweet Hereafter and Thirteen Days.
Besides opening VIFF, Being Julia, Istvan Szabo's British period piece co-starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons, earlie opened Toronto's big filmfest.
Greenwood says film-festival openings aren't so different than the studio-movie openings for films he's appeared in such as I, Robot and Hollywood Homicide.
"You do a glossy red-carpet opening in Toronto and then you follow that up with a day or two of talking to one reporter after another -- usually on camera for a day and usually print for a day," Greenwood says. "And that's essentially what you do opening a big movie for a studio.
"The difference is that when you're opening a big movie for a studio that's not in a festival you don't bump into everybody you've ever worked with and you don't get a chance to see 30 films that you otherwise wouldn't even know existed."
Greenwood says Being Julia's Budapest shoot was particularly enjoyable.
"My days off I'd sit by the river and read and write, drinking cappuccino and watching the Danube go by. Then I'd have to shlep into work with Annette Bening. It doesn't really get a lot better."
Next week, Greenwood's in Utah for The World's Fastest Indian, directed by Roger Donaldson (Thirteen Days) and starring Anthony Hopkins. He also co-stars in the upcoming Racing Stripes, a mix of live action and animation.
Greenwood moved from Vancouver at a time when there was little work for local actors but he has maintained a strong relationship with the Canadian filmmaking scene.
"At first, I would come back here just because I happened not to be working and there was a job. Being a working actor you go where the work is," Greenwood says. "Then I began to realize that the stuff that was available up here, generally speaking, was more interesting.
"I started working with Atom Egoyan and that opened me to a new kind of level of Canadian cinema. It became clear that when you come back here there's an opportunity to do stuff of quality. It's really apparent, it's really there, it's a real thing.
"I have the sense that it's getting stronger and stronger and more and more varied."
He foresees the day when "all of us that enjoy a good living from those Hollywood productions up here can begin to enjoy a good living from stuff that's wholly indigenous.
"There is a formula to make that happen. And I'm not quite sure what the equation is but I'm sure it's there. The talent pool and the infrastructure's here. We may be close to a turning point where that can all happen."
Meanwhile, Greenwood is doing his bit for Vancouver film, having optioned the local novel Stanley Park, which he hopes to shoot in the city next summer.
And while he lives in L.A., he leaves no doubt where his heart resides.
"We'll eventually come back here," he says (his wife is also a Vancouverite). "I have no doubt.
"When I come back here I'm just so happy. It doesn't matter what the weather is. It doesn't matter if it's pissing rain, I'm still happy.
"It's where I grew up. It's who I am. For me, it's impossible not to feel as though I'm home."
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