Famous Canadian Actors: Now Disc. Alan Thicke

I'm sorry folks, but I absolutely stand by my original statement. He's versatile.

The character he plays in Coppola's The Conversation is anything BUT cocky and confident, and he did a superb job. He plays an incredibly introverted, paranoid, soft-spoken techie.

When he's dancing in drag in The Birdcage, he certainly doesn't look confident and competent, he looks terrified and nervous.

Is the blind man he plays in his Young Frankenstein cameo cocky and confident?
Hardly.

YMMV.

Why is Hackman in this thread anyway? According to IMDB, he was born in San Bernadino, California in 1930. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000432/bio

Shatner? I wanna fight William Shatner.

 

We were discussing Keanu Reeves, and then suddenly someone mentioned Hackman and we were off to the races.

I agree; Hackman is a versatile actor when he gets the chance. If all you are offered is "Welcome to Mooseport", he might not try too hard, though.

 

Donald McNicol Sutherland, OC (born 17 July, 1935) is a Canadian character actor with a film career spanning over 50 years. He is currently working in the American television series, Dirty Sexy Money. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, in 1967, and M*A*S*H and Kelly's Heroes in 1970, and an overly optimistic health inspector in Invasion of the Body Snatchers in 1978.

Career beginnings

In the early to mid-1960s, Sutherland began to get small parts in British films and TV, landing notable roles in horror films with Christopher Lee, such as Castle of the Living Dead (1964) and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and twice appearing in the The Saint, firstly in the 1965 episode "The Happy Suicide" and then, more auspiciously, in a story called "Escape Route" at the end of 1966. The episode was directed by the show's star, Roger Moore, who later recalled that Sutherland "asked me if he could show it to some producers as he was up for an important part... they came to view a rough cut at the studio and he got The Dirty Dozen. Thus, Sutherland was on course for the first of the three war films which would be his initial great successes: The Dirty Dozen in 1967, with Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson; in 1970, as the lead "Hawkeye" Pierce in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H; and, again in 1970, as tank commander Sgt. Oddball in Kelly's Heroes, with Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas.

Filmography

1960s

* Castle of the Living Dead (1964)
* Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
* Fanatic! (1966)
* The Bedford Incident (1965)
* Promise Her Anything (1966)
* The Dirty Dozen (1967)
* Sebastian (1968)
* Joanna (1968)
* The Sunshine Patriot (1968)
* The Split (1968)
* Interlude (1968)

1970s

* Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)
* M*A*S*H (1970)
* Kelly's Heroes (1970)
* Alex in Wonderland (1970)
* Act of the Heart (1970)
* Little Murders (1971)
* Klute (1971)
* Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
* F.T.A. (1972)
* Steelyard Blues (1973)
* Lady Ice (1973)
* Don't Look Now (1973)
* Alien Thunder (1973)
* S*P*Y*S (1974)
* The Day of the Locust (1975)
* End of the Game (1976)
* The Eagle Has Landed (1976)
* Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976)
* 1900 (1976)
* Blood Relatives (1977)
* The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977)
* The Disappearance (1977)
* Bethune (1977)
* National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
* Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
* Murder by Decree (1979)
* A Man, a Woman and a Bank (1979)
* The Great Train Robbery (1979)
* Bear Island (1979)

1980s

* Ordinary People (1980)
* Nothing Personal (1980)
* Threshold (1981)
* Gas (1981)
* Eye of the Needle (1981)
* The Winter of Our Discontent (1983)
* Max Dugan Returns (1983)
* Ordeal by Innocence (1984)
* Crackers (1984)
* Terror in the Aisles (1984, archive footage)
* Revolution (1985)
* Heaven Help Us (1985)
* The Wolf at the Door (1986)
* The Trouble with Spies (1987)
* The Rosary Murders (1987)
* Apprentice to Murder (1988)
* Lost Angels (1989)
* Lock Up (1989)
* A Dry White Season (1989)

1990s

* Buster's Bedroom (1990)
* Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990)
* Scream of Stone (1991)
* Long Road Home (1991)
* JFK (1991)
* Eminent Domain (1991)
* Backdraft (1991)
* The Railway Station Man (1992)
* Quicksand: No Escape (1992)
* Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
* Younger & Younger (1993)
* Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
* Shadow of the Wolf (1993)
* Benefit of the Doubt (1993)
* The Puppet Masters (1994)
* Punch (1994)
* Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1994)
* The Lifeforce Experiment (1994)
* Disclosure (1994)
* Outbreak (1995)
* Hollow Point (1995)
* Citizen X (1995)
* A Time to Kill (1996)
* The Assignment (1997)
* Natural Enemy (1997)
* Shadow Conspiracy (1997)
* Free

 

They're both very talented. Donald has great humanity and great reality; his definitive performance is in Ordinary People, in which he is exactly that, and beautifully so. Kiefer specializes more in grotesques; he could play a hell of a villain back in the day and he's managed to create an iconic hero by playing him as a borderline villain, just the way we like our iconic heros. Both great actors.

 

Donald can be a little campy. Kiefer is generally a heavy to light/heavy by nature.

 

Donald was pretty darn creepy in the remake of Salem's Lot a few years ago.

 

I am suprised they are canadians.

 

Martin Short

[image=http://www.canadians.ca/celebs/martin_short-slide.jpg]

He is a multi-talented actor, producer, writer, who brought to life such memorable characters as Ed Grimley, and perfectly evil impersonations of Jerry Lewis, amongst others. He's also done some voice work in animated films such as "The Price of Egypt", and "The Pebble and the Penguin", and has even hosted his own talk show. Of course, as you may all know, Martin Short was part of the stellar ensemble cast of SCTV Network 90, alongside other Canadian comics John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Dave Thomas.

Career

Early career

When Short graduated from McMaster University, he intended to pursue a career in social work, but he became interested in acting once he was cast in a Toronto production of Godspell in 1972 (among the other members of that production's cast: Victor Garber, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas and Andrea Martin, with Paul Shaffer as musical director.) He was subsequently cast in several television shows and plays, including an intense topical drama, Fortune and Men's Eyes. (He worked solely in Canada from 1972 through 1979.)

In 1979, Short starred in the TV sitcom The Associates about a group of young novice lawyers working at a Wall Street law firm.

Short then joined the cast of I'm A Big Girl Now, a sitcom vehicle for Diana Canova in 1980. Canova was offered the sitcom due to her success playing Corinne Tate Flotsky on ABC's Soap, and she left the cast of the latter show in the fall of 1980 in order to accept the offer shortly before Short's newlywed wife Nancy Dolman joined it.

SCTV

Short was encouraged to pursue comedy by McMaster classmates Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas, both notable comedians in their own right. He joined Levy and Thomas at improv troupe The Second City in 1977. Short came to public notice when the troupe produced a show for television, called Second City Television or SCTV, which ran for several years in Canada and the United States. Short was a cast member and performed several recurring characters. He was a member of the troupe for several years before moving on to Saturday Night Live for the 1984-1985 season.[6] At SCTV, Short developed many characters which he later used at SNL:

* Talk show host Brock Linehan, based on the Canadian interviewer Brian Linehan.
* Aged songwriter Irving Cohen, loosely based on American composer Irving Caesar.
* Spurious albino entertainer Jackie Rogers, Jr.
* Current-events commentator Troy Soren
* Industrialist and art patron Bradley P. Allen
* Defensive attorney Nathan Thurm
* Oddball man-child Ed Grimley. This character was later featured in his own animated television series, The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley.

Saturday Night Live

At SNL, Short helped revive the show after Eddie Murphy left with his many characters, including the Wheel of Fortune fan Ed Grimley he borrowed from his SCTV days. The Grimley character became perhaps Short's best known original character. He also was recognized for his impersonations of celebrities, notably Jerry Lewis and Katharine Hepburn, and for the character of Nathan Thurm. SNL proved to be the springboard to a long career in film & TV.

Film

After doing sketch comedy for several years, Short focused on film roles, appearing in many films, including Three Amigos, Innerspace, The Big Picture, Captain Ron, Clifford, Mars Attacks, and the 1991 remake of Father of the Bride as well as the sequel. In 2004 he wrote and starred in Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, with Jan Hooks as his wife, Dixie Glick. He also appeared as the comic foil for Santa Claus, playing "Jack Frost" in the 2006 Walt Disney film The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause. Short was also in Pure Luck directed by Nadia Tass with Danny Glover and Sheila Kelley,[7] and in Three Fugitives directed by Francis Veber with Nick Nolte and James Earl Jones.

Live performances

Short also resumed work in the theater, taking a role in the 1993 musical version of the Neil Simon work The Goodbye Girl, receiving a Tony Award nomination as w

 

Doesn't seem to be working very much any more...

 

I absolutly adore him.

 

Growing up I loved Martin Short on SCTV & SNL. He's got such a manic energy that I think you have to see him live to truly appreciate him. He's always funny on talk shows particularly on Letterman. His impressions can be deadly accurate, he was the first one I remember having a Robin Williams impression, which pretty much soured me on the real Williams forever. He also has a fabulous Paul Shaffer impression.

Unfortunately his movie career has produced little quality. I think his best film is "Innerspace." It was probably his best piece of acting yet still comical. His other films are mostly him doing shtick, or for some reason being the straight man.

 

Thats right, i first saw him on Hallmark, so much for quality.

 

Alan Thicke (born Alan Willis Jeffery; March 1, 1947) is a Canadian actor, songwriter, and game and talk show host. He is best known for his role as Jason Seaver, the patriarch on the ABC television series Growing Pains.

Apart from Growing Pains, Thicke also appeared on the American television series Hope & Gloria, which lasted 35 episodes. In 2004, Thicke hosted the Miss Universe Canada pageant. In April 2006, he hosted Celebrity Cooking Showdown on NBC, in which celebrities were teamed with famous chefs in a cooking competition.

In August 2006 and 2007, Thicke made a few appearances as talk show host Rich Ginger on The Bold and the Beautiful. Thicke also had a cameo appearance in the 2007 movie Alpha Dog as the father of the lead character's girlfriend.

In 2008 Thicke appeared in a major supporting role as Jim Jarlewski in the television series adaptation of Douglas Coupland's jPod. That year, he also had a cameo appearance in the How I Met Your Mother episode Sandcastles in the Sand as the dad in Robin's second "Robin Sparkles" music video. He also appears on a website made specifically for the show, canadiansexacts.org.

In February 2009, Thicke made a guest appearance on adult swim's Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. In the same month, he made a guest appearance on the web series Star-ving.

Thicke had a role in the 2009 film The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, starring Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames, Ed Helms, Ken Jeong, and James Brolin. On July 10th, 2009, Thicke appeared on the 1000th episode of Attack Of The Show, and sang a song with Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn, at the end kissing Munn.

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Discuss.

 

What were those movies he was in where the kid was a robot or something? I loved those, as a child. Doubt they'd hold up.

 

I remember those. Not Quite Human. There was a similar movie called D.A.R.Y.L. I liked as a kid.