in canada

he talent pool in Canada is growing. But is the deeper resource bank leading to juicier roles for Canadian actors? The jury is still out. Agents and casting directors across Canada are divided on the issue.

Stuart Aikins, a Vancouver-based casting director, says Canadian actors have had breaks but only when a casting director pushes. ‘Some casting directors aren’t prepared to fight as I am to get a Canadian a part,’ says Aikins, who moved from Toronto to Vancouver five years ago. He was the casting director for Clint Eastwood’s feature Unforgiven and is currently casting the TriStar feature Hide Away.

Overall, he says, Canadians are getting breaks because budgets are lower for features and mows and, because they have serviced numerous shows from the u.s., they have gained more credibility.

‘Almost everyone who worked for Unforgiven has launched themselves in a higher category,’ says Aikins, referring to John Pyper Ferguson and to Lochlyn Munro, who is with Vancouver’s Northern Exposure agency. Munro is now doing a guest role on the series Blossom.

‘The last five years the talent pool has increased. We get the rare chance of getting actors in leading roles in American-based productions,’ says Murray Gibson of The Characters agency in Vancouver, a division of the Toronto-based talent agency. Actors such as Vanessa King, who starred in Liar, Liar, have a good profile. When the cbc mow aired on cbs in the u.s. it won a 14.5 rating/26 share and beat out Roseanne and Beverly Hills 90210 that evening.

Another hot actor at The Characters is Gordon Tootoosis, who landed a principal role in the TriStar feature Legends of the Fall after Graham Greene turned it down. Tootoosis, who starred alongside Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt, is going to be the next Greene, according to Aikins.

Toronto casting directors Marsha Chesley and John Buchan are less upbeat about the Canadian prospects for leading roles. ‘We are inching forward,’ says Chesley. Because Canadians are coproducing more with u.s. companies, producers here have more veto power. However, when producing for the u.s. market there is still a question of ‘tvq’, which refers to how familiar an actor is to viewers due to previous exposure.

As a result, most lead roles still go to recognizable American actors. ‘We have a better chance of getting the second or third lead,’ says John Comerford, who has worked 10 years in Toronto as a casting director. ‘We need to develop more Canadians with tvq.’

There have been exceptions. Comerford managed to cast Canadian Rachel Crawford as a u.s. figure-skating champion for an mow, and Buchan and Chesley fought hard and won the battle to have Gordon Pinsent play the father of Canadian lead Paul Gross in the cbs pilot Due South, which was produced by Alliance Communications.

‘They (the network) wanted a recognizable American name like James Coburn or Charles Bronson,’ says Chesley. In addition, when it looked like Gross couldn’t do Due South because of other commitments, the u.s. network wanted to get American actor John Schneider to play the character of a displaced Mountie working in Chicago and find a Canadian star to play the American cop. Chesley and Buchan resisted. No American actor could find the Mountie’s character – that blend of stoicism and sensitivity, says Chesley.

Eventually, the producers had to wait for Gross. ‘We always wanted Paul. He’s uniquely Canadian and we proved that an American couldn’t play it.’

Most of the growth in the talent pool is for young actors, according to Steve Waddell, national executive director for ACTRA Performers Guild. ‘There is more emphasis on young and beautiful due to more American production up here,’ he says.

That being said, Canadian actors tend to be better trained than their u.s. counterparts because they go through classical theatrical training, says Waddell. actra predicts its talent base will swell from the current level of 8,000 members to 10,000 due to an apprentice member program it recently introduced. An actor can apply as an apprentice member after one engagement in a principal role.

Although the talent numbers are growing in Toronto and Vancouver, in Montreal they remain virtually unchanged. What has changed over the last five years is the actual rise of agents. Unlike Toronto, where agencies such as Oscars and Abrams and Great North Artists have been around for years, the agent biz in Montreal is a relatively new phenomenon.

‘Up until five years ago there were no agents here. Casting directors called actors directly, which made it more difficult,’ says casting director Lucie Robitaille. ‘There was resistance from Union des artistes and from producers,’ she adds.

Casting directors, however, argued that there was a need for agents and that actors should get better organized, because,’at some point people from other countries would be coming around and they wouldn’t be ready,’ says Robitaille.

Production in Quebec has remained relatively stable but salaries for actors have not. ‘Budgets are low,’ says casting director Murielle La Ferriere. As a result, actors in Quebec are taking big cuts. ‘They are taking them because they have no choice,’ unless they are bilingual and are looking to the English market, as is the case with Quebec stars Roy Dupuis and Marina Orsini, says La Ferriere.

Unlike American agents, Canadian agents are more flexible. Many act as both agent and manager. For example, Perry Zimel of Great North Artists is managing Kate Nelligan.

‘Some clients ask us to manage them so they don’t have to deal directly with the agent in the u.s.,’ says Michael Oscars, who is Helen Shaver’s agent and manager in Canada. In the u.s., agents often act as middlemen and broker deals on behalf of talent they don’t personally represent but who are under the umbrella of the agency. ‘Here we do everything,’ says Oscars.

‘We have a better international perspective here in Canada, and when you are dealing in as many countries as people like Brad Fraser (Love and Human Remains) deals in, an absolute management situation is required,’ says Shane Jaffe of Great North Artists. Fraser is represented by icm in the u.s. and managed by Jaffe. He is currently rewriting scripts at several studios and his own projects are being developed.

Managing clients and affiliating with u.s. talent agencies has been one way agents in Canada have been able to stay in the game when stars move south of the border. But the threat of u.s. agents raiding Canadian talent is escalating with the increase in American/Canadian coproductions.

In order to stave off attack from their u.s. counterparts, Canadian agents are starting to co-operate on package deals. ‘Agencies once jealously guarded their piece of the pie,’ says Charles Northcote of The Core Group Talent Agency. That is now changing, in part ‘because there is a common enemy, i