Bruce Greenwood (Martin / Ussher) won rave reviews in 2001 for his portrayal of President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis drama Thirteen Days. The film also brought him mass audience attention, attention he has never particularly sought, but which his subtle and detailed portraits of memorable heroes and villains -- make long overdue.

His first major role was as the second-generation sex symbol and bad boy Dr. Seth Griffin in the long-running hit drama St. Elsewhere. When the series ended, he starred in bio-pics like Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys (1990) and glittering soap operas like Judith Krantz' Dazzle (1995) and in the now-revered cult favorite series Nowhere Man (1995-96).

In the early 1990s, Greenwood began working in feature films and has since amassed an impressive list of credits. Before Thirteen Days, he was best known to wide audiences as the husband-victim-villain in 1999's surprise hit Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd. He is starring in the upcoming supernatural thriller Below for Miramax as well as Sony's romantic-comedy, Swept Away, costarring Madonna and Jennifer Aniston. His greatest acclaim had come from his work in independent film: as the grieving father of two children killed in a school bus accident in Atom Egoyan's searing The Sweet Hereafter (1997), for which he received a Genie Award nomination as Best Actor, and for his work in Egoyan's earlier Exotica (1994).

For Bruce Greenwood, who appeared in Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica and who plays a role within a role, a modern-day actor named Martin and the historical hero Clarence Ussher, "Ararat is a film about a great many things, filled with characters from many different backgrounds. What I love about Atom's work is that inevitably, you meet characters you would think have no common trajectory but who eventually not only intersect but deeply affect one another in a myriad of ways. Then all the straight lines of time begin to waver and the wavy lines begin to boil. That's the genius of Atom's style and one of the reasons I'll work with him anytime on anything. Hell, I'd come in and deliver a pizza for him because I know it would be a totally new experience."

Actor Bruce Greenwood, a man close to Egoyan and his work, was moved by so many of the film's extras and how they represented Egoyan's idea of Ararat as a film about living proof. "I think the living proof, for example, are some of the extras in the film," says Greenwood. "I remember one man who worked in one of my scenes who was 93 years old. So the living proof is ever aging and with that aging comes the inability to

"Bruce Greenwood's character of Martin portrays Ussher," explains Egoyan, "who was this heroic figure who was able to ensure that the American Mission in Van remained the safe zone in which the women and children could hide. There was a hospital inside the Mission and Ussher made sure that no guns came inside and that it remained absolutely neutral. It's sort of an Alamo-type story. I was very faithful to that text. It was an amazing thing to discover."

ARARAT is Atom Egoyan's most provocative film to date. It is a story about truth and denial - on both an intimate and a grand scale. The estranged members of a contemporary Armenian family are faced both with Turkey's denial of their catastrophic past and with their own complicated present: A mother who only wants peace, a young woman who wants nothing but retribution, and a young man whose journey to uncover his roots is jeopardizing his future. Told in Egoyan's trademark elliptical style, ARARAT is at once a mysterious and powerful story about determining truth.