Hollywood talent wave from Canada

Canadians always have played a part in Hollywood going back to Toronto-born Mary Pickford. The Canadian comic sensibility seems to manifest itself about once a decade: Lorne Michaels, Dan Aykroyd, John Candy and Ivan Reitman, Jason’s dad, skated across the border in the late 1970s and early ’80s, while Jim Carrey and Mike Myers slipped in under the cover of hockey jerseys in the early 1990s. With 600,000 Canadians living in Los Angeles, it almost could be considered the sixth largest Canadian city.

The latest wave has a strong comedian component, though it is not so much part of the Second City circuit as in times past. But it also boasts dramatic actors, as evidenced by Gosling, Polley, Rachel McAdams and Sandra Oh.

One factor fuelling the wave is years of "runaway" production to cheaper locales. American productions have been hitting the shores of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal since the introduction of tax incentives in the late ’90s before moving to such other centres as Halifax and Winnipeg.

"(Film production) is almost commonplace there," says Rachel Shane, an executive at Sony-based Red Wagon Prods., who hails from Winnipeg. "People have much more access to being in movies and TV, and more people are being discovered because of that. Kids who would have been doing community theatre or stand-up are now finding a real outlet. That was not the case before, not at this level."

Many of the actors and filmmakers of the current wave also keep one foot in the homeland. Page and Cera come to Los Angeles from their respective hometowns of Halifax and Brampton, Ontario, to conduct business, then fly back. Director Jean-Marc Vallee, who helmed the 2005 French-Canadian film "C.R.A.Z.Y.," recently shot "The Young Victoria" in the U.K., then went home to Montreal.

The outsider status gives the filmmakers and actors a different sensibility, an edge that leads to thinking outside the Hollywood box.

"You have this Eurocentric auteur style of awareness combined with the geographic proximity as our neighbours to the North, which gives them this solid grasp of American pop culture," says Nathan Ross, a talent agent who represents Vallee and Oscar-nominated director Deepa Mehta, an Indian native who lives in Toronto.

The new crop isn’t shy about flying their Maple Leaf flag, either. It was Rogen’s idea to make his character in "Knocked Up" an illegal Canadian, and he and Goldberg like to pepper their works with references to Canada.

"It’s a shout-out," Rogen says. "We just know that when our friends in Canada see the movie they’ll be happy."

It’s too early to measure the long-term impact of the latest wave, and Rogen isn’t spending too much time analyzing it, insisting, "I’m just happy when Americans aren’t mean to us."

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter