Illustration by Kagan McLeod
Decades ago, when asked what being Canadian meant to him as an actor, Christopher Plummer noted that he and his fellow Canuck performers were lucky, their talents for shape-shifting moulded by the unavoidable influences of our neighbours to the south and our mothership across the Atlantic: “We are chameleons.”
Such is the crux of the age-old CanCon culture debate, which is now being played out via the Online Streaming Act as Ottawa seeks to define just what is and what isn’t Canadian entertainment. Or, to narrow it down to Plummer’s field: Who are the great Canadian actors, and who are the great actors who just happen to be Canadian?
The 25 (or so) names below offer one argument – these are the performers whose careers are inseparable from Canadian culture itself. Some might not have spent the bulk of their lives making film and television in Canada – and with apologies to our many stage titans, this list is focused on screen actors – but they have all made concerted efforts to keep at least one foot on homegrown soil.
This means that many obvious candidates – Jim Carrey, Ryan Gosling, Keanu Reeves, Anna Paquin, Matthew Perry – didn’t make the cut. Others came close, such as Rachel McAdams (who might not be the Hollywood star that she is today without early projects like Slings & Arrows), Seth Rogen (who’s returned home briefly for, um, The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down), and the long-retired Rick Moranis. And some names break all the rules described above because, well, why not? Don’t blame Canada – blame me. Politely.
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25. Saul Rubinek and Michael Ironside (tie!)
Both actors made appearances in Waterloo, Ont., favourite BlackBerry (2023).
Maybe it’s our tendency toward humble eccentricity, or our scrappy resistance to movie-star norms, but Canada produces more than its fair share of “hey-it’s-that-guy” character actors. Julian Richings, Callum Keith Rennie, Elias Koteas, Kevin Durand, Enrico Colantoni, Henry Czerny, Matt Frewer, Maury Chaykin, Stephen McHattie – they all could have made the cut here. But there are two “that guys” who stand tall above the rest, and who also both neatly popped up in last year’s BlackBerry, the biggest, best and most unabashedly Canadian film in ages. Saul Rubinek, who started his screen career with a string of CBC movies and TV pilots, has always taken Plummer’s “chameleon” maxim to heart, expertly slipping between Canadian mensch (The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick) and Hollywood maniac (True Romance). Michael Ironside, meanwhile, possesses the kind of intimidation factor that makes him the heaviest of heavyweights, no matter which side of the border (Scanners here, Total Recall there) he’s on.
24. Théodore Pellerin
In SOLO (2023), Théodore Pellerin plays a young emerging drag queen navigating romance and family in Montreal.
It is unfair to compose this list of both English- and French-language actors, so unique and vastly more commercially successful the Quebec scene is compared with the rest of the country. Yet it is hard to think of any performer, Québécois or not, who has enjoyed such a strong run so early out of the gate as Théodore Pellerin. This includes the actor’s searing trio of collaborations with director Sophie Dupuis, whose films Family First, Underground and Solo mined Pellerin’s natural vulnerability with such a fervour it was as if the filmmaker had discovered a brand-new element. Which maybe she has. Even at his young age, Pellerin is not an emerging talent – he’s a solidified one, strong enough to smash any language barrier.
23. Elliot Page
Umbrella Academy star and Halifax native Page poses for a portrait in Toronto.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Carving his own singular path through the industry, Elliot Page is as much a gift to Canadian culture as he is a champion. There is his work in Hollywood arenas both gigantic (Inception) and small-fry (Juno), but also his full-hearted determination to explore all corners of Canadiana, from Patricia Rozema’s Into the Forest to Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses. Today, Page is using his on-screen presence with a determination to genuinely effect change – not a necessary marker of a great actor, but entirely welcome. And perhaps uniquely Canadian.
22. Stephan James
Stephan James as Jesse Owens in Race (2016).
There are actors on this list whose Canadian-ness is reflected in the projects they align themselves with. There are those who’ve gone Hollywood, but so passionately advocate for their homeland that they get a patriotic leg up. And then there is Stephan James, who is doing both with an intense commitment to culture and community. Not only has James sparked a mini-revolution alongside his actor brother Shamier Anderson with their non-profit organization The Black Academy, but he also turns up the heat on whatever sized screen he’s appearing, from the Jesse Owens biopic Race to Clement Virgo’s The Book of Negroes to Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk. Best of all: James is just getting started.
21. Jay Baruchel
Jay Baruchel in BlackBerry (2023).Courtesy of Elevation Pictures
If Canada is in the mood to adopt a new national holiday, why not Jay Baruchel Day? The fiercely patriotic son of Montreal is not only the hardest actor working today, but one so dedicated to propping up the wobbly Canadian industry that he deserves at least a postage stamp to mark his achievements. Baruchel isn’t only a prolific player, but one who is refining, sharpening and reshaping his craft. He can be the nebbish and the goof, certainly, but also the nutbar (Cosmopolis), the instigator (The Trotsky), the oil-slick villain (Humane). And in BlackBerry, Baruchel reveals new layers of himself so tender and tragic that you’ll race back through his filmography faster than you can send an iMessage.
In BlackBerry (2023), Jay Baruchel ("Mike Lazaridis”) and Glenn Howerton (“Jim Balsillie”) star as the company's incipient co-founders.Courtesy of IFC Films / Elevation Pictures
20. Clark Johnson
Clark Johnson in Nurse.Fighter.Boy (2008).
Born in Philadelphia but a Montrealer at heart and in spirit, Clark Johnson might be the most prolific double threat on this list, acting as much as he directs. And he’s become such a familiar presence that every time his face or name shows up on-screen – ideally both – it’s clear that the production is in the hands of a deeply committed artist who builds his stories and characters inch by inch. For Johnson, whether it’s his searing lead performance in Charles Officer’s Nurse.Fighter.Boy or his directorial work on the 2020 legal thriller Percy, all the details matter.
19. Bruce Greenwood
Bruce Greenwood in Exotica (1994).
Smoothly toggling between playing what he once called “men in suits with sticks up their asses” and tightly wound headcases, Bruce Greenwood is both a stealth utility player and a not-so-secret weapon fit to unleash dramatic shock and awe. Blessed with matinee-idol looks and the formal poise of a general – the reasons that he’s been cast as every authority figure under the sun, including two separate U.S. presidents – Greenwood could have made a comfortable life for himself in Hollywood. Yet he keeps pushing the Canadian limits, often in the service of Atom Egoyan, with the pair collaborating five times, including such touchstones as Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and Ararat.
18. Michael Greyeyes
Michael Greyeyes in Blood Quantum (2019), as he battles the fallout of a zombie apocalypse.
There are lots of gory distractions competing for your attention in Jeff Barnaby’s 2020 zombie film Blood Quantum. But the violent antics of the Canadian thriller, which layers the shocks of the undead genre with the horrific history endured by Indigenous people, take a back seat whenever Michael Greyeyes is on-screen. Playing a lawman facing a uniquely Canadian apocalypse, Greyeyes holds the film together bit by bloody bit in a breakthrough performance – which is a bit disingenuous to say, given that the actor has been delivering time and again over the past three decades. From his startling dancing in Clement Virgo’s Rude to his wonderfully deadpan work on Rutherford Falls, Greyeyes holds the screen with the most natural of grips.
17. Geneviève Bujold
Geneviève Bujold at TIFF in 2012.Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail
Once, while speaking with Time magazine, Geneviève Bujold confessed, “I love the camera. When it’s not on me, I’m not quite alive.” The feeling must be mutual, as the Montreal actress radiates such a vivid, fully formed presence that the lens comes to life in its own right. Celebrated in France early in her career, and then Hollywood-certified after her Oscar-nominated performance in 1969′s Anne of the Thousand Days, Bujold continuously injected her delicate intensity back into Canadian cinema, from Dead Ringers to Kamouraska to Still Mine. “When I say I love the camera, it’s because it’s safe there,” Bujold told The Globe a decade ago. “It’s like the eye of God. You can’t fake it there.”
16. Colm Feore
Colm Feore in 2020.Chris Young/Supplied
Although the Canadian Screen Awards are drowning in categories, may I propose a new CSA honour for Best Everything Everywhere All at Once Actor, with Colm Feore taking the inaugural prize? When he’s not stomping across the boards at Stratford, Feore is devouring every role imaginable – from inhabiting the damaged genius of Glenn Gould to trouncing Vin Diesel in outer space – while keeping the straightest of faces and the absolute air of authority. He is Canada’s very own multiverse, personified.
15. Molly Parker
Molly Parker attends the L.A. premiere of her HBO show Deadwood.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
If Canada’s best-known actors have a Shakespearean edge to them – Feore has that Richard III vibe, Plummer is all-in as Lear – then Molly Parker might possess the artful machinations of Lady Macbeth (minus, you know, the murder). There is a rich, smoky sense of internal scheming to a Parker performance. Watching the actress shift personas through careful, quiet calibration – from the tender taboos of Kissed to the gritty quirk of Twitch City to the classical heartache of Essex County – there is no choice for audiences but to follow Parker’s path, wherever that might lead.
14. Roy Dupuis and Paul Gross (tie!)
Roy Dupuis in 2024.Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
Paul Gross in 2023.Carlos Osorio/The Globe and Mail
Canada’s twin leading men of a certain era, Roy Dupuis and Paul Gross feel like the real Bon Cop, Bad Cops of homegrown entertainment. Each exuding a just-rough-enough energy, it’s a small wonder that the two have yet to share the same space on-screen. So until that free idea gets picked up by an industrious Telefilm-approved producer, audiences can continue to grow alongside the two men as they become that much more adventurous in their later careers. Dupuis continues to balance headlining projects alongside audacious work with auteurs (catch him next in Guy Maddin’s Rumours), while Gross has traded in his Due South and Passchendaele uniforms for the jagged crown of Lear at Stratford. All hail the kings.
13. Sarah Polley
Sarah Polley outside the TIFF Lightbox in 2022.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
Today, and for the foreseeable future, Sarah Polley is known more as a filmmaker than a performer. But if it seemed like Polley was the Canadian actress to watch for decades prior, it’s because she really was. Few performers can hold the screen’s attention with as natural-born talent as the once and forever Sara Stanley. And despite being coveted by any number of Hollywood filmmakers – some more respectful (Doug Liman, Zack Snyder) than others (Terry Gilliam) – Polley has remained a true champion of homegrown cinema. The Sweet Hereafter, Last Night, Slings & Arrows, My Life Without Me and so much more: The history of contemporary Canadian film is written in Polley’s IMDb profile.
12. Sandra Oh
Killing Eve star Sandra Oh attends the 95th Annual Academy Awards in 2023.FREDERIC J. BROWN
One of the best things about a Sandra Oh performance is that each feels powered by a bold and confrontational curiosity. Whether playing a stranded woman staring down the end of the world in Last Night or a monstrously overprotective mother in Turning Red, Oh immerses herself in an endless pursuit of depth. It is a quest that seems as much professional as it is personal. Oh can disappear so deep into a character – including her collaborations with director Mina Shum (Double Happiness, Meditation Park) – yet still retain the same flash of an artist engaged in a relentless, restless chase with her craft.
11. Martin Short and Mike Myers (tie!)
Martin Short in 2024.Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
Even though Canada’s comedy-world brain drain is no laughing matter – and even though that joke wouldn’t work on the weakest episode of This Hour Has 22 Minutes – there are two comic geniuses who made their money in L.A. but never forgotten to spell humour with a “u.” Martin Short deserves a Heritage Minute for his time on SCTV alone, to say nothing of his CBC history. Mike Myers, meanwhile, may never have landed on Saturday Night Live’s stage were it not for his proto-Wayne’s World work on Moses Znaimer’s City Limits. Plus: He was the first person to ever make a comedy about the Toronto Maple Leafs – even if the reception to The Love Guru ensured that he will also be the last. Yeahhhhh … baby?
Mike Myers attends the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute Gala honouring actor Nicole Kidman at Dolby Theatre, in 2024.Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
10. Suzanne Clément
Suzanne Clément in 2018.LOIC VENANCE/Getty Images
Canadian cinema has a surprising number of director-actor BFFs: Egoyan and Greenwood, Dupuis and Pellerin, David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen. But the most beguiling might be the relationship between Xavier Dolan and Suzanne Clément. The star of Dolan’s early-career triple punch of I Killed My Mother, Laurence Anyways and Mommy, Clément tethers her director down to Earth, finding urgent emotional ground in the most knowingly overblown of visions. Dolan might have walked away from the screen altogether, but if Clément threatens to ever do the same, Canada (and not just Quebec) shall riot at dawn.
9. Tantoo Cardinal
Tantoo Cardinal.Nadia Kwandibens/The Canadian Press
As is the case for so many actresses – especially Indigenous performers, especially in Canada – Tantoo Cardinal’s characters have had many “moments” on-screen, yet not nearly enough full-blown arcs. Only recently has this oversight been rectified, such as in under-seen 2018 drama Falls Around Her. Yet even when Cardinal only gets a sliver of the screen time her talent demands, she makes the very most of it. Is it bitterly ironic that Cardinal is having her brightest moment in the spotlight only now, and only thanks to Martin Scorsese for casting her in Killers of the Flower Moon? Of course, that’s the Canadian way. But homegrown audiences who have been paying attention for years – from Black Robe to North of 60 to The Grizzlies – know that Cardinal is a star. Always has been.
8. Sheila McCarthy
Sheila McCarthy in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987).Supplied
While making a miniseries together decades ago, Sally Field gave Sheila McCarthy a piece of advice: “An actor must reinvent themselves every five years.” McCarthy has taken that lesson and run a double-marathon with it, delivering performances that range in genre and size and complication but always retain the vibrant light that can only radiate from a truly adventurous artist. From her breakthrough in Patricia Rozema’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing – one of the most important performances in this country’s cinematic history – to her gripping work in Polley’s Women Talking and shocking turn in the under-seen 2020 horror film Anything for Jackson, McCarthy’s career is a testament to the power of mutability.
7. Donald Sutherland
'They ask me at the border why I don’t take American citizenship. I could still be Canadian, they say. You could have dual citizenship. But I say no, I’m not dual anything. I’m Canadian.' - Donald SutherlandLUKE MACGREGOR/Reuters
If Canada could ever mystically will itself into becoming one single historical figure, its citizenry might elect to become the spirit of Donald Sutherland. With eyes as blue as the prairie sky, his subtle command of a room, and a voice that my colleague Johanna Schneller perfectly described as the purr that a cashmere sweater would make if it could, Sutherland was the very essence of dignified, curious, cut-your-heart-and-it-bleeds-maple-syrup Canadian hero. He seemed to cherish his Hollywood work (Robert Altman! Oliver Stone!) as much as he did his homegrown performances (Threshold, Forsaken, and not one but two projects in which he played Norman Bethune). He’s even been immortalized on a Canadian stamp. Signed, sealed, delivered – he’s forever ours.
6. Gordon Pinsent
Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie in Away from Her (2006).Courtesy of Mongrel Media
Perhaps Gordon Pinsent’s late wife, actress Charmion King, once summed up the actor’s homegrown appeal best: “He doesn’t play arrogance. He doesn’t play stupidity. I think Canadians are like who he portrays. And even if they’re not, they see it and they want to be it.” Across a tremendous body of work – much of which forms the backbone of this country’s culture – Pinsent eased his way into national-treasure status with such finesse that no reasonable Canadian could question it. And it was clear the favourite son of Grand Falls, N.L., enjoyed it just as much as his audience. Retirement was never in the cards. And thank goodness for that, or we wouldn’t have Away from Her, The Grand Seduction, even his vocal work as King Babar. Long may Pinsent’s memory reign.
5. Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy (tie!)
Schitt's Creek co-stars Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy attend the 24th annual Critics' Choice Awards in 2019.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Canada’s unofficial first couple of comedy (who aren’t actually a couple), Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy represent the prime and sublime ridiculousness of Canadian comedy, an eternally slippery notion that only truly sticks when you watch these two pros trade smirks and barbs. With a partnership stretching from SCTV to Schitt’s Creek, plus a dozen entertainment milestones in-between, O’Hara and Levy work so well together precisely because they prioritize a sense of drama over comedy – their performances place character first, trusting that the natural laughs will arrive. And they do, again and again.
4. Michael J. Fox
Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox speaks to a crowd in San Jose, Calif., in 2016.JOSH EDELSON/AFP / Getty Images
The long-forgotten CBC sitcom Leo and Me might have been Michael J. Fox’s last true CanCon production, but the irrepressibly charming, ridiculously spirited, unfailingly courageous actor so sincerely embodies the platonic ideal of “Canadian talent” – and so frequently makes a point of highlighting his Canadian-ness for all who will listen, going as so far to lend his voice to the CBC’s 2024 Olympics promos – that he earns his spot near the top of this list with ease. Canada will share Fox with Hollywood with no complaint, only pride.
3. Mary Pickford
Affectionally known as 'America's Sweetheart' during the silent film era, Pickford was actually born in Toronto in 1892.The Associated Press
While her movie career essentially started and ended in the United States, there has never been as important a Canadian screen star as Mary Pickford, America’s Toronto-born sweetheart. The actress beloved by silent-era audiences for her curly locks and innocent demeanour was not only an essential part of Hollywood history – the medium simply wouldn’t be what it is today without the work that she put into it – but a sensationally vivid presence. The emergence of “Talkies” might have spelled the end of Pickford’s reign – to say nothing of the calamity it dealt her ex-husband Douglas Fairbanks – but her legacy remains unmatched.
2. John Candy
John Candy appears at the Academy Awards in April, 1988.The Associated Press
When he hosted the Canadian Screen Awards in 2016, Norm Macdonald (another perfect candidate for this list who might’ve made it had he ever tried acting like anyone other than “Norm Macdonald”) suggested that the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television should rename the CSA award the “Candy,” in honour of the man, the myth, the legend. The Canadian Academy foolishly never took up the idea, even though John Candy’s life and career are representative of everything that the country’s film and television industry should be: adventurous, irrepressible, sincere, brilliant. Even though we only got John Candy for just 43 years, his performances, both captured in Hollywood and at home, will echo throughout Canadian culture for as long as this industry, and country, cares to exist.
1. Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer poses for a portrait while promoting All the Money in the World (2017).Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
And now we come to the ultimate Canadian chameleon. Depending on your vintage, you might carry a particular image of Christopher Plummer deep inside your head, or your heart. Is it the Third Reich-flag-ripping Captain von Trapp of The Sound of Music? The sleazy psychopath of The Silent Partner? The ornery Sherlock of Murder By Decree? He could be Iago, Macbeth, Lear, too. Rudyard Kipling and John Barrymore. Plummer was the first and perhaps last kind of Canadian legend – an actor who appealed across the board, his charisma unlimited. Whatever Christopher Plummer wanted from an audience, he got. And we were more than happy to offer ourselves, for however long that he might have been available.
Plummer in Remember (2015).
Best Honorary Canadian Actor: Viggo Mortensen
The soft-spoken but intensely talkative actor, screenwriter and director possesses a certain ineffable Canadian spirit, despite being born in New York and raised in Venezuela, Denmark and Argentina. Perhaps it is Mortensen’s quiet dedication to his craft. Or the fact that he has spent a large part of the past decade working with Canadians, including frequent collaborator David Cronenberg. Or maybe it’s just Mortensen’s penchant for wearing a Habs jersey just about everywhere he goes. Whatever the case, he’s one of us.
Top 10 Emerging Canadian Actors
In another two decades or so, the names below could easily top the Greatest Ever list.
10. Mark Clennon (I Don’t Know Who You Are)
9. Kacey Rohl (White Lie)
8. Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open)
7. Iman Vellani (Ms. Marvel)
6. Amrit Kaur (Queen of My Dreams)
5. Devery Jacobs (Backspot)
4. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan (Never Have I Ever)
3. Isaiah Lehtinen (I Like Movies)
2. Lamar Johnson (Brother)
1. Deragh Campbell (Anne at 13,000 ft.)