Actor overwhelmed by U of S honour
Kim Coates didn’t want to wear tights as an acting student at the University of Saskatchewan, but he’ll don a robe for convocation on June 6.
The L.A. actor and Saskatoon native will get an honorary doctor of letters at spring convocation — on the same stage he walked when he graduated from the U of S in 1981, bound for an acting career that’s taken him around the world.
“It’s overwhelming, really,” Coates said in an interview. “I stumbled into acting, I stumbled into drama. I refused to wear tights in those first years. I didn’t know what a sonnet even was. And now to look back at my career and all that I guess I’ve accomplished from good fortune and hard work, I find this overwhelming and I’m so thankful.”
Coates started in theatre, playing Macbeth at the Stratford Festival and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. He branched into film with roles in Hollywood movies like Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbour. On TV, the Sons of Anarchy series made him a celebrity worldwide as an outlaw biker.
“Kim is a shining example of the breadth of the programming that we offer at the U of S, including the creative arts, and just how far you can go when you have a passion and a commitment to your craft. We are extremely proud to call him one of our own,” U of S President Peter Stoicheff said in a statement.
Coates remembers working fulltime at Safeway to save money for university. He majored in history before taking drama classes and falling in love with acting. He said his lasting memory of the university is the Hangar Building where the drama department was located, a relic from the Second World War which was notorious for flooding.
“I was never more excited to walk to a class than to that building, without even knowing why in those early years. It was the Hangar Building. It was truly everything to me,” Coates said.
He is scheduled to speak briefly at convocation. He gets eight minutes, he said.
“I’m going to be very heartfelt and very funny. I’m very humbled by the whole thing, so I’ll make it short and sweet and a bit of humour in there. I’ll just be so happy to come.”
He supports several charities, including Creative Kids, which brings him back to his hometown.
“I’ve just never forgotten my roots. I think that’s because of my mom and dad and my incredible friends — my closest friends in the world are from Saskatoon. I love coming home,” Coates says. “Everything ’s important to me in Saskatchewan — except the winters.”