Paul Gross has always done things his way
Actor, director, writer prefers working in Canada to Tinseltown
Paul Gross was in New York City when he was told he was to be appointed to the Order of Canada.
“The phone line was terrible and I thought it was someone asking me to be on the jury for the Governor General’s Awards and I said ‘I’m too busy’ ... and just hung up,” Gross said. “They rang back immediately and said ‘Just don’t hang up yet. Would you be willing to accept the Order of Canada?’ ”
The Calgary-born actor, director and writer is to be invested into the Order of Canada at a ceremony in Ottawa on Friday although the announcement was made back in 2013. A few weeks from now, he will receive the Earle Grey Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, a recognition of the three decades he has spent as a gifted, ambitious and stubbornly Canadian artist. These are the sort of honours that can lead to deep reflection and career assessment from the honouree. But, not unlike during that New York call, Gross has other things on his mind.
“It’s odd that the two are coinciding and it always seems faintly preposterous to me because I don’t really ever think of myself in terms of a career,” he says. “I just think in terms of projects I’m working on and what I’m interested in at that moment. In a strange way, I am kind of thinking I’ve done a lot of things that add up to what, I’m not sure. But both of them are quite humbling. It’s an odd feeling to think you’ve been around for so long.”
What Gross is interested in at this moment is Hyena Road, a film about Canadian snipers and intelligence officers in Afghanistan. Gross is barely recognizable, his hair white and shorn into a military cut as an intelligence officer named Pete. The film, which Gross also writes, directs and produces, is based on interviews he did with Canadians soldiers in Afghanistan when he visited the war zone four years ago. He took 50 hours of footage by going out on foot patrols in the Horn of Panjwaii with a camera crew. The film itself was shot in Winnipeg and Jordan. It’s due out in the fall.
It’s the latest chapter in an eclectic, maybe even erratic, career Gross cheerfully admits has unfolded without much of a game plan. If there is a prevailing theme, it’s that his triple-threat talents as a writer, director and actor have led to projects that require a significant investment of time and energy, which takes away from any time he might spend plotting career advancement. Dating back to his theatre-school days at the University of Alberta in the early 1980s, Gross was determined to be a writer and not just another hunky actor.
It has helped make him a rarity in the Great White North, a successful filmmaker and Canadian movie star who has dabbled in Hollywood, American TV and Broadway but enjoyed his most notable triumphs here at home.
That includes the role of earnest Mountie Benton Fraser that he played from 1994 to 1999 on CTV’s Due South, a series that he would eventually go on to produce. It includes a run as Hamlet at the Stratford Festival in 2000. In 2003 he created another iconic Canuck role, playing wonderfully unhinged theatre director Geoffrey Tennant in the critically acclaimed series Slings and Arrows. In 2007, he returned to Calgary to shoot the First World War epic Passchendaele, arguably the most ambitious and certainly one of the most expensive Canadian film ever made. Hyena Road will offer a distinctly Canadian look at the murky world of modern warfare.
“It’s (Canada) my home, it’s where I feel most aligned to,” Gross says.
“I love to travel, I like to go other places. But in part I like doing it because I appreciate where I come from more. I’ve been lucky enough to stay in a place that I know to be my home and be able to work here. It’s not always easy and in some ways I’m sure I could have had a slightly easier ride of things trying to finance films. When I’ve thought of doing something I’ve been able to do it here. It’s a combination of this is where I’m from, this is what I know, my country is the country I like to talk to and the fact that I don’t particularly find the business of Los Angeles appealing.”
Born in Calgary in 1959, Gross spent his formative years as an army brat, living in Alberta, Newfoundland, England, Germany and Washington. He doesn’t remember a specific epiphany that convinced him he wanted to act, but says his somewhat rootless childhood may have played a role.