Coming from the rarefied atmosphere of academia to make your screen debut in an Atom Egoyan movie would be a major adjustment for most.

Not for David Alpay, who exchanged one ivory tower for another when he took time out from studying human biology and zoology at the University of Toronto to star in Egoyan’s Ararat.

For his efforts, Alpay has been nominated for a Genie in the best performance by an actor in a leading role category.

‘We hit it off, surprisingly,’ the 20-year-old says of his first meeting with Egoyan, a fellow egghead known for intellectual gamesmanship both on screen and off. ‘We spent four hours talking in the abstract, creating a framework for discourse.’

Fame and celebrity is not for this young thespian, whose only other acting experience was in university productions of The Cherry Orchard and The Crucible.

Alpay embraced Egoyan’s signature elliptical movie structure and the skepticism about the concepts of truth and history that underpinned his original screenplay for Ararat.

‘If you think about it, the film is about the search for truth,’ Alpay suggests of Egoyan’s movie-within-a-movie about the 1915 genocide of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks, and its apparent use of the Socratic question-and-answer method to render the past.

‘Socrates never told people what they should think. He drew it out of them,’ Alpay argues, drawing parallels between Athens and Atom.

In Ararat, Alpay plays a teen coming to terms with his Armenian father’s death, a role he relished both as an actor and someone of Armenian background.

‘It’s doubly important,’ Alpay says of Ararat. ‘It resonates in a deep way that I find emotionally fulfilling.’

As for future acting roles, Alpay is leaving it up to fate. ‘This isn’t anything you plan for. I’m not anticipating anything concrete.’

And he’s making no predictions about his chances of snagging the Genie.

‘I don’t know if I’ll win,’ Alpay sighs, eyeing more seasoned competitors Christopher Plummer (also for Ararat), Colin Roberts (Flower & Garnet), Philip DeWilde (Turning Paige) and Luc Picard (Savage Messiah).

‘I really hate wishful thinking. You’re not allowed to do that in science,’ he concludes, ever the stickler for truth.