IN THE SPOTLIGHT
A I’ll give you one example: A man from a small town, Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, tweets that his son who’s autistic will only eat pasta from a carton that has Star Wars stuff on it, but they’ve run out of the cartons in Nanaimo and can anybody help him. I retweeted that saying, “Let’s help this man,” and he received thousands of cartons from elsewhere of the food. Plus the Kraft company called and said to the young man, “We want your help in designing a new carton.” That singular thing, who knows what affect that will have on an autistic kid? And the kindness of everybody to react to that man will change everybody’s character for their lifetime . ... I’m calling it the Ubuntu Project and I want you to feel your humanity by giving something — it could be innocuous, it may be nothing to give $10, but you’re exercising your ubuntu. Q You’ve embraced comedic roles later in your career. How intentional was that shift?
A
When I started out in theater in Canada — I had about five years as a professional actor before I came down to the states — I did only light comedy... Then got into serious roles, and my ability to play comedy was shunned to the side there for a while, but I’ve always thought that the character I’m playing should have a sense of humor about something. Deadly serious is deadly in my opinion.
Q
You’re starting another film soon. What can you say about it?
A
It’s called “Relic.” I wrote the story and a friend of mine wrote the screenplay and we’re going to make it in November.