There are two sides to Peter Keleghan. One is the actor who has made audiences howl at his off-the-wall characters on Canadian and U.S. series. The other is the staunch defender of the interests of his fellow performers. And it is both sides that ACTRA Toronto will fete when it bestows upon him the Award of Excellence at its annual awards show, Feb. 20 at the Carlu.

‘Whether lobbying on Parliament Hill, or negotiating union contracts at the bargaining table, one of the key reasons that ACTRA Toronto is such a powerful and effective advocate for performers is the exemplary involvement and union activism of our stars,’ said recently exited ACTRA Toronto president Karl Pruner upon the award announcement in December. ‘Peter Keleghan is a perfect example.’

The Montreal-born actor says he is humbled by the honor. He will now have to make room on his mantel alongside his four Gemini Awards – three as part of the ensemble cast on the CBC production-biz satire Made in Canada, and one for his role as dimwitted news anchor Jim Walcott on The Newsroom.

‘The most flattering part of it is the people that have come before me,’ says Keleghan of his latest prize, which will see him join the ranks of past winners Sarah Polley, Paul Gross, Sonja Smits, Wendy Crewson, Eric Peterson and Gordon Pinsent, who just happens to be the father of his partner, Leah Pinsent. (The couple met in Halifax while shooting Made in Canada.)

On behalf of the actors union, Keleghan has protested Canadian networks’ level of commitment to Cancon and lobbied Ottawa politicians to revise the CRTC’s controversial 1999 Television Policy.

Most recently, he devised the Creative Arts Savings & Credit Union, a financial institution for film and TV professionals, who have traditionally gotten the cold shoulder from the big banks, and no doubt more so in the current economy.

The idea was inspired by the AFTRA-SAG Federal Credit Union, of which he was a member during a four-year period in Hollywood in 1990s, during which he starred in three network pilots and appeared on Seinfeld, Murphy Brown and Cheers.

From his first break here at home in the 1980s sketch series The Comedy Mill to a lull in his career a couple of years ago, he understands first-hand the financial ups and downs of the actor’s life. With that in mind, the credit union will offer not only Internet banking – with eyes on network ATM access and its own credit cards – but also much-needed guidance.

‘Young people coming into the business as I did – getting into a series and having a windfall for a certain amount of time – [will be shown] what you need to do, how you need to invest, when you need to be incorporated, where to go for your taxes, and how to do GST,’ explains Keleghan, who has put most of his life savings into the venture, which required $2.5 million to get off the ground.

Organizers are currently in the midst of a soft launch to test the system, with an official opening planned in the coming weeks.

The ACTRA award presentation will hardly be a retirement party for Keleghan, who, turning 50 this year, has of late been one of Canada’s busiest performers.

He is currently prepping the CBC one-hour special Love Letters for Canada, his adaptation of A.R. Gurney’s play Love Letters, in which two actors read the longtime correspondence between a man and woman who come to understand their true feelings for one another only later in life.

The TV version, to be helmed in June by Tim Southam, will feature six real-life Canadian celebrity couples (including Keleghan and Pinsent, who have read it on the stage), and will have them drift from reading the text to addressing the camera about their actual relationships, à la When Harry Met Sally. On board with Triptych Media, Keleghan hopes for an airdate around Valentine’s Day 2010.

And then there is the pilot for the half-hour CBC dramatic comedy 18 to Life from Galafilm Productions, in which Keleghan and Ellen David play the uptight parents of a teenage boy (Michael Seater) who, on a dare, marries his next-door neighbor (Stacey Farber).

Recent credits also include his role as a philandering millionaire father on Showcase’s legal comedy Billable Hours, and voice-over work on the forthcoming Canwest primetime animated comedy Producing Parker, set behind the scenes at a TV talk show, and also featuring Kim Cattrall.

He is also fielding more phone calls after having opened himself up to the indie Canuck film world. He has recently shot five features awaiting release, including Eating Buccaneers, The Bend, GravyTrain, Leslie, My Name Is Evil (from Monkey Warfare director Reginald Harkema) and Coopers’ Camera, turning down better-paying gigs for meatier roles and the chance to work with hungrier filmmakers.

‘So much of the real cream is in some of those filmmakers who come up and have such driving ambition to make it good and will do anything to get it up there,’ he says. ‘You get paid 25 cents, but at the end of the day you’re much more satisfied with what you’ve got. You just have to do a hell of a lot more of it to make a living.’

In the outrageous comedy Coopers’ Camera, Keleghan does a hilarious turn as smarmy Uncle Tim, who comes between his brother Gord (Jason Jones) and Gord’s wife Nancy (Samantha Bee) on Christmas Day in 1985. The movie is currently slated for a Yuletide 2009 release through Boutique Films.

‘I’m really lucky that we got him,’ says Coopers’ director Warren Sonoda. ‘He just came in and was a true professional. He came in very ready. So many things happened and he was really calm and patient.’

Sonoda also credits the actor’s fearlessness. ‘He did a scene completely in his underwear. We didn’t really talk about it. In the script, the character’s in his underwear, so he did it in his underwear. He had no arguments.’

Meanwhile, Keleghan says he is not particularly reflective about turning the Big Five-Oh this year, but if there was one thing he would still want to accomplish, it would be to play a romantic lead à la Tom Hanks.

‘I’ve played stupid, bad, mad, good, lascivious, and poor,’ he says, ‘but that’s the one thing I’ve never done.’