One gets the impression in talking with renowned performer Colm Feore that only a tornado – which had ripped through his neighborhood in Stratford, ON the night before he spoke with Playback – could keep him in his living room for very long.

This year’s NBC Universal Award of Distinction winner has nearly 100 credits to his name, including career-defining roles as Glenn Gould and Pierre Trudeau, Hollywood fare like Chicago and I, Robot, and of course, domestic blockbuster Bon Cop, Bad Cop. But the Boston-born and Windsor, ON-raised Feore, 48, is not one to rest on his achievements.

When Playback had a chance to corral the uber-versatile actor ahead of his Banff honor, he was fresh off a one-day cameo on a micro-budgeted indie western by the twentysomething Campagna Brothers (recently graduated from Ryerson University), and about to jet to New Orleans for an epic period piece on Quebec folk-hero-cum-criminal Lucien Rivard, directed by Charles Binamé (The Rocket). Feore will also do an onstage interview at Banff with his Bon Cop producer Kevin Tierney.

How do you feel about being considered ‘distinct’?
Well, I’m at an age now where anything is good. There’s going to be a lunch provided, so I’m there. I should be all ‘Oh, no, please, don’t be silly.’ But that would be pointless, and you wouldn’t get invited to the dinner.

Well, the award announcement cited your versatility.
That’s kind of cool. Because so often there’s such a big line of distinction between film, television, theater – and all the other things that actors have to do to make money. I think it’s essential that you practice whatever skills you can. Obviously, somebody on the [Banff] committee said, ‘Oh, yeah. This guy is out there.’

Growing up in Windsor, how did you discover acting?
I went to school in St. Catharines, ON, and there were a lot of good teachers who were very influential early on. Plays were part of the curriculum, and one roommate was pretty good at writing [them] overnight. He would have been a very good television writer. We’d all get together and communally direct them and everybody would be in them. Really straight out of that – which was high school – I was encouraged by one of the profs to go out to audition for the National Theater School.

How did you get involved in TV and film?
It evolved, because it’s useful to have a foundation in the theater before you go off to do television and film. It’s always been something I could fall back on in terms of a structure. Very often film and television [productions] don’t have a lot of money [for you] to be lounging around doing rehearsals for a month. So when you show up, you’ve got to be ready.

When it’s somebody else’s money, you really want to display your professionalism by being skilled and fast. I found that enormously useful in film and television because they’re so under the gun. ‘Before the sun goes down and the last plane goes over the bow of the ship, do you think you can manage to say all this drivel? Because, if not, we won’t understand why Ben Affleck is kissing that girl.’ You become very useful if you can do that.

Be efficient and fast…
I remember being in a wonderful film called Titus (1999) directed by Julie Taymor. We were stuck in a sulfurous bog and the light was going and we had literally seconds to go. I have to walk through the swamp with no arms, no tongue and bleeding from the side, carry [a girl] off whilst speaking in iambic pentameter, and turn and know that it’s a 25mm lens at X number of feet, etc. If you can process all of that, and speak the Shakespeare like you know what you’re talking about, and carry the girl into the sunset – they ask you back. It’s really kind of simple.

So the best actors do a lot of preparation?
That’s been my experience. As I called you, I was processing images, figuring out the learning curve on Capture One photographic software for the latest in my collection of cameras. It’s nuts. Why am I doing it? So that when I’m on a set getting ready to act X, Y or Z, I would know that a 50mm [lens] is going to see a whole lot more than 100. Then I can tailor the acting. The best guys I’ve seen tailored their work over the course of the day to exactly what was asked of them. Nothing more, nothing less. It sounds slightly callous, but it’s terrifically professional.

One of your first TV gigs was For the Record (1981)…
With the brilliant [director] Donald Brittain. I was just thinking about that. I had some very good help about reaction there. I was pretty naive about cameras and such, but then it was more about practicing the acting. I talked to some of my acting teachers from the theater school before I went to the audition – back when the CBC was doing auditions. You could go and just be on their list.
Because they had so much going on…

Yes, it was crazy. It was a rite of passage. You had to go in and audition for Ann Tait. I remember panicking about how to do my audition pieces, because it wasn’t from the show itself. It was just a general audition. And I said to one of the teachers, ‘Listen, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do here.’ And he said [assumes a British accent], ‘It’s really rather simple. It’s television, dear boy. Show them a few moments of intensity, and a few moments of quandary, and it’ll be fine.’

He showed me what that looks like. I applied those rules, and they came out of the booth shaking my hand. And I had a job.

Cagney said, ‘Just stand up and say your lines,’ but there’s a whole lot of charisma and naturalism involved.
Naturalism is just so hard to fake. You talk about the best examples of those types of guys like Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper, who were very relaxed. You go, ‘How do you do that?’ And I suppose the George Clooneys of this world have captured something of that.

The best guys that I’ve seen appear to be just showing up. But if you look at their notebooks and you see them locked away in their hotel room, you know in fact that they’ve been working like crazy.

Are you still challenged by the craft?
I keep trying to do things that make it difficult for me. Things that I don’t really know how to do. A year and a half ago, I did a movie [called Intervention] that was improvised – because I failed improv at theater school. I was just hopeless. I required text by people who had been dead for at least 200 years. I had diarrhea just thinking about it, but we went ahead and did it.

And now I’m hoping to be able to do another one with [Intervention director Mary McGuckian]. It was so much fun. You’re going back to the basics with all the stuff you already know, but you can chuck it. It’s a bit like bondage. You have a safe word like ‘Uncle.’ So, I suppose, as far as being versatile goes, it’s just the only way to survive.

What’s left for you to do in this country?
I want to keep working at as many things as I can in a varied way. When I say varied, I don’t mean I’m going to try and work differently, but I come from the repertory theater, which means that I’m used to doing four different plays in a week…

Or Don Juan in English and French…
And then Coriolanus and Oliver!, because that would be fun. They all cross-pollinate. Because you’re not doing eight Julius Caesars or Hamlets a week, you get more energy out of it. I like to do that in television and film. Right now I just finished Serveuses demandées with producer Kevin Tierney, who did Bon Cop, and I’m in the middle of shooting [period feature drama] Rivard with director Charles Binamé. And I’m shooting a pilot in L.A. And hopefully I’m doing some work with the symphony… And I’ve been doing narration [for PBS]…

Any desire to get behind the camera and direct?
No. I couldn’t direct a two-car funeral. I’m married to a director [Donna Feore], and I know my limitations. It would be helpful if I know what a properly composed shot is and where I’m supposed to stand and speak my lines from, but I think I better not get more uppity than that.