As if it's story time for children at a local library, Bruce Greenwood, a slight man of 48 with a sweet elfin face, has pulled his feet up and crossed his legs underneath himself. He's hugging his knees and looking at me with big, blue saucer eyes.
Only he's giving me a very distinct grownup message.
Don't analyze me, his clear eyes telegraph, scowling a bit for effect as they take in and let questions swim in his interior a bit before deigning to honour them (or not) with a response.
An actor on a sofa is automatically on the couch, in my book. But Greenwood doesn't like to reveal much about himself. He is a Peter Pan, wanting to alight long enough to say a few plucky sentences about his work but never, never to delve into serious thoughtfulness. He's got the perfect name: Greenwood. Stay youthful; carefree. Don't show those interior age rings.
It's weird, really, when you think about it. For someone who plays such clearly articulated characters on film (John F. Kennedy in Thirteen Days, the twisted husband opposite Ashley Judd in his breakout role in 1999's Double Jeopardy, a malevolent corporate type in I, Robot, to name a few), he is deeply unfathomable. His physical cuteness is what passes for personality.
Several times, Greenwood steers the conversation back to his new movie, Racing Stripes, a goofy, touching story, due in Canadian theatres next Friday, about a zebra who thinks he is a racehorse. Greenwood plays Nolan Walsh, a nice dad with a barnyard full of misfit animals, who once trained racehorses. To please his daughter, he helps her train Stripes (yup, that would be the zebra's nickname) to compete with thoroughbreds. How do we know the zebra wants to race? Oh, that.
Well, the animals talk in this movie (among themselves, that is). Even the flies.
"I try to pick stuff that I think is going to be most satisfying to me on a couple of levels," Greenwood says of his career choices. "And more and more, I'm just picking the stuff that I respond to on a visceral level. I do stuff that touches me or makes me laugh or that I think has merit. I don't really plan what I do. I'm pretty spur-of-the-moment. I don't have many responsibilities, either, so I'm lucky that way."
One of Greenwood's more interesting biographical notes is that he has been married for more than 20 years to Susan Devlin, his childhood sweetheart, whom he met for the first time at the age of 15.
"She occasionally comes [on location]toward the latter half of whatever film I'm doing," he offers. He travels so much for his work (Racing Stripes was shot in South Africa) that he "doesn't even have a houseplant" in his house on the beach outside Los Angeles, he says. They have no children, he adds. Pets? "A cement dog named Rascal," he says, tossing me a bone.
He winces with a fake laugh as he gives up that detail, as if he knows it's cute enough to make it into print and is therefore part of what he throws to the publicity machine.
So, does his marriage keep him grounded? He gives me his eyes, placid and still.
"Yeah, probably," he says after a few beats of silence. "Sure." He is hugging his knees a little tighter. "It's been there so long, I don't even think about it."
It's unusual for a Hollywood marriage, I suggest.
"Ah, maybe," he says slowly. "Perhaps." He shrugs. "There are at least as many solid, long-term marriages in Hollywood as there are anywhere else," he bravely states. "I don't think we're an anomaly."
I greet that response with silence. "One of the reasons my marriage is successful is because I don't talk about it much," he says to fill the void, plastering what remains of it with a wide, very white smile.
By the sound of it, Greenwood had an itinerant childhood, as the family of three children moved around Canada and the United States, following his father's work as a geologist and academic. He and his two younger sisters were living in Vancouver by the time he was 11 (he was born in Noranda, Que.), after his father took a job teaching at the University of British Columbia. He was aimless, he says, adding that he decided to become an actor after seeing Brad Dourif's performance as Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
"I knew my strengths lay in languages. I didn't know what else I could do, besides be a writer or an athlete," he says. His mother worked as a nurse as well as an academic. "My strengths didn't lie in that [the academic]direction. I wasn't bent that way."
For three years, he studied philosophy and economics at UBC, taking his first drama course as an easy credit. He never graduated. For a year, he worked on a boat in Greece. In 1980, he set off for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. In Canada, mostly in Vancouver, he began in the theatre, then appeared in television shows. In 1995, he won a Gemini for playing Caleb Stokes in Road to Avonlea. He also had a recurring role in St. Elsewhere.
His film career is notable for its variety. Asked about his roles in Atom Egoyan's movies, The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat and Exotica, he says, "It was a conscious decision to come back [to Canada]to do something that I thought would be quality as opposed to taking lots of money to make the schlock that I happened to be involved in at the time.
"I never really chased anything like fame," he says, relaxing a bit.
"Fame is such a nothing thing."
But doesn't he worry about doing a corny movie like Racing Stripes?
"So you can stay a serious actor, you mean?" he shoots back. "Not me," he says, waving a hand through the air. He would like to do a "banana-peel, walk-into-a-plate-glass-window, fall-down-a-manhole kind of comedy," he declares.
Tell your agent, I suggest. "You think I just pick up the phone and get what I want?" he asks, unravelling somewhat. "Are you kidding me? It's a very competitive business. I'm just one of hundreds of guys out there."
Despite critical acclaim for roles such as JFK in Thirteen Days, Greenwood hasn't achieved megastar fame. "I don't really understand how people parlay themselves into becoming big stars," he says. "Maybe I should have had more outrage 10 years ago and said, 'If you guys [agents and managers]don't produce for me in a certain, very specific way, then I'm going to find somebody else who will.
"But it's not who I am."
How he negotiates the highs and lows of the Hollywood world is by working hard and enjoying the life of travelling to foreign countries, inhabiting different characters and meeting new people, he explains. He also plays guitar. In L.A., he regularly plays backup in a band for his friend, actor Gregg Henry. "I'll do something with my music eventually," he allows. "But I'm still looking for the voice and I'm getting better at it." He also likes to write. "I write songs," he confesses in a low voice. "And journal stuff."
So maybe that's it, I say, trying to put a fix on him. He's a writer at heart, an observer. "I probably participate more than an observer might. I'd be a bad anthropologist," he says, laughing. "I'd want to get in there and sit at the fireside. I can't not be in it."
Which is where acting comes in. "Yeah," he says, slowly nodding his head of curly, sandy locks.
As he puts his cashmere coat on, over his casual ribbed sweater and faded jeans, he offers his own self-analysis, as though he wants to close down the session for good. "Maybe my lack of being hard-driven and ambitious is a function of my West Coast laid-back thing," he says, with a far-too-pleasant smile, before turning his back.