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	Printed Articles & Interviews Winnipeg Sun September 23, 1999

Just Call Him Big, Bad Bruce

Loves to Play Heavies

LOS ANGELES:

Bruce Greenwood epitomizes the lot of the actor. Victimizer one day, victim the next.

Greenwood, born in Noranda, Que., plays the heavy in the film Double Jeopardy, which opens tomorrow. His character, Nick Parsons, fakes his own murder and pins the crime on his trusting innocent wife, Libby, played by Ashley Judd. While she's serving time, he lives the high life on the insurance money with Libby's best friend, played by Annabeth Gish.

Playing that kind of scum is a far cry from Greenwood's recent gig in Winnipeg this spring in the film Cord. In the role of Daryl Hannah's husband, it was Greenwood who fell victim to a psychopathic harridan played by Jennifer Tilly.

"She rolled me up in a carpet and beat me," he says. "It was good fun."

Greenwood laughingly says he enjoyed the challenge.

"You can only act with your head," he says. "You can only thrash around like a burrito.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't a new carpet. It was taken from the very back of an antique shop," he says. "They rolled it up to show me what it was going to look like and when they unrolled it, there were huge clouds of lice and dust and filth." Greenwood laughs. "Even the crew went (yuk), " and he grimaces in mock repulsion.

Greenwood has twice played bereaved fathers for Atom Egoyan, in Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, but he acknowledges that kind of work isn't offered him very often. And in comparatively conventional thrillers such as Double Jeopardy, he is happier playing the bad guy.

"That's where the confrontations are," he says. "The conflict often isn't written in for the good guys but for the bad guys. The conflict is what it's all about. So, there's more to play, there's more to chew on, there's ... more fun."

It was Greenwood's first time working with Ashley Judd, which is ironic since he played Judd's real-life step-father in the TV movie Naomi And Wynonna: Love Can Build A Bridge, based on Ashley's mom Naomi's memoir.

"I came in to do the screen test for this show (with Ashley) and she said, 'You played my father.'

"And I said, 'I want to try playing your lover this time.'

"So that was a little weird," Greenwood says, "But she was very generous about it."