Actor

(b. August 22, 1958 Boston, Massachusetts)

Enormously talented and versatile, this classically trained character actor effortlessly projects intelligence, elegance and grace in virtually every role he inhabits. A highly respected stage veteran, Feore has utilized his commanding presence, sharp features and kinetic physical and vocal energy in roles as diverse as lawyers, eccentrics, dignitaries and psychopathic villains. His Gemini Award-winning performance as the former Canadian prime minister in the CBC mini-series “Trudeau” (2002) made him one of the few Canadian actors who is indeed a household name (even if many people say it incorrectly; it’s pronounced “column”). In addition to his ongoing stage work at the Stratford Festival and on Broadway, Feore has emerged as arguably the most in-demand actor in Canada, and has appeared in more than fifty film and television productions in the last ten years.

Born in Boston to Irish parents, he spent his first few years in Ireland before his family moved to Ottawa when he was three. He was raised in Windsor, where he was educated in French immersion schools, and attended Ridley College in St. Catherines, Ontario, where his drama teacher encouraged him to apply to the National Theatre School in Montreal. He was accepted and, after graduating in 1980, worked at the National Arts Centre and the CBC and “building squash courts in Toronto for guys I went to school with.” In 1981, at the height of its most tumultuous years, Feore joined the Stratford Festival, where he eventually became associate director. During his thirteen seasons at Stratford, he performed in more than forty productions and established himself as one of Canada’s premiere stage actors, playing virtually all of Shakespeare’s leading men from Richard III and Iago to Romeo and Hamlet, as well as many other characters in classical and contemporary plays.

His first on-camera experience came with leading roles in two plays filmed for television: The Boys from Syracuse (1986) and A Nest of Singing Birds (1987). After a number of minor parts in forgettable films and television series such as Iron Eagle II (1988) and “War of the Worlds,” he landed his first significant film role supporting Donald Sutherland in Philip Borsos’s beleaguered Bethune: The Making of a Hero (1990). He followed this with his first leading role in the Genie-nominated Beautiful Dreamers (1990). In 1993, he was approached to play the lead role in François Girard’s ground-breaking Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993). The film, and Feore’s acclaimed performance as the eccentric piano genius, was especially well respected in Hollywood. The offers that came pouring in were enough to lure him away from Stratford.

A bevy of television work followed – including the HBO movie Truman (1995), in which he gave a strong supporting performance opposite Gary Sinise – before he landed supporting parts in four Hollywood movies in 1997, including Sidney Lumet’s Night Falls on Manhattan and Critical Care and John Woo’s Face/Off, with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. Feore followed these with impressive roles in Brad Silberling’s City of Angels (1998), Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999) and Julie Taymor’s Titus (1999), starring Anthony Hopkins. He also gained massive exposure in middle America with his chilling performance as a minion of the Devil who terrorizes a small Maine community in the ABC-TV mini-series “Steven King’s Storm of the Century” (1999). (King and producer Mark Carliner were so adamant about casting the largely unknown Feore as the lead in the $35 million production that they engaged the network in a four-week standoff before executives finally caved in.)

Feore’s burgeoning career as a Hollywood character actor continued with roles in Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour (2001), Rob Marshall’s Academy Award®-winning Chicago (2002), John Woo’s Paycheck (2003) and David Twohy’s The Chronicles of Riddick (2004). In the midst of his rising success and hectic schedule – which also included ample television work, roles on Broadway and a brief return to Stratford in 2002 – he continued to work in a number of Canadian films. He earned a Genie nomination for Best Lead Actor for Leonard Farlinger’s The Perfect Son (2000), played a Nazi war criminal in the CBC-TV mini-series “Nuremberg” (2000) and also appeared to great effect in Carl Bessai’s Lola (2001), David Weaver’s Century Hotel (2001) and Michael Mackenzie’s The Baroness and the Pig (2002).

In 2002, immediately after his Gemini-winning performance as Pierre Trudeau, Feore received an honorary doctorate of humanities from the University of Windsor. He is currently playing Cassius to Denzel Washington’s Brutus in a Broadway production of Julius Caesar, and lives with his second wife Donna, a Stratford choreographer, and their three children in Stratford, Ontario.

Film and video work includes

The Great Detective, 1981 (actor; TV)
The Boys from Syracuse, 1986 (actor; TV)
Skate, 1986 (actor; TV)
A Nest of Singing Birds, 1987 (actor)
Diamonds, 1988 (actor; TV, one episode)
Iron Eagle II, 1988 (actor)
The Taming of the Shrew, 1988 (actor; TV)
Friday the 13th series, 1989 (actor; TV, one episode)
War of the Worlds series 1989 (actor; TV, one episode)
Beautiful Dreamers, 1990 (actor)
Friday the 13th series, 1990 (actor; TV, one episode)
Personals, 1990 (actor; TV)
War of the Worlds series, 1990 (actor; TV, one episode)
Artemisia: A Woman's Story, 1992 (actor)
Beyond Reality, 1992 (actor; TV, one episode)
In Flanders Fields, Heritage Minute series, 1992 (actor)
Street Legal series, 1992 (actor; TV, one episode)
Beyond Reality series, 1993 (actor; TV, one episode)
Romeo & Juliet, 1993 (actor; TV)
The Spider and the Fly, 1994 (actor; TV)
Forever Knight series, 1995 (actor; TV, one episode)
Friends at Last, 1995 (actor; TV)
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues series, 1995 (actor; TV, one episode)
Truman, 1995 (actor; TV)
Where's the Money, Noreen?, 1995 (actor; TV)
The Boor, 1996 (actor)
Due South series, 1996 (actor; TV, one episode)
Kung Fu: The Legend Continues series, 1996 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Outer Limits series, 1996 (actor; TV, one episode)
Critical Care, 1997 (actor)
The Escape, 1997 (actor; TV)
Face/Off, 1997 (actor)
Hostile Waters, 1997 (actor; TV)
Liberty! The American Revolution, 1997 (actor; TV)
Louisbourg Under Siege, 1997 (narrator)
Night Falls on Manhattan, 1997 (actor)
Night Sins, 1997 (actor; TV)
The Wrong Guy, 1997 (actor)
Airborne, 1998 (actor)
City of Angels, 1998 (actor)
Peter Benchley's Creature, 1998 (actor; TV)
La Femme Nikita series, 1998 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Herd, 1998 (actor)
The Lesser Evil, 1998 (actor)
Storm of the Century, 1998 (actor; TV)
Striking Poses, 1998 (actor)
Forget Me Never, 1999 (actor; TV)
The Insider, 1999 (actor)
Titus, 1999 (actor)
Boston Public series, 2000 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Caveman's Valentine, 2000 (actor)
La Femme Nikita series, 2000 (actor; TV, one episode)
Foreign Objects, 2000 (actor; TV)
Ignition, 2001 (actor)
The Making of 'Titus', 2000 (appears as himself)
Mars on Earth: Preparing for Life on the Red Planet, 2000 (narrator; TV)
Nuremberg, 2000 (actor; TV)
The Perfect Son, 2000 (actor)
Thomas and the Magic Railroad, 2000 (voice)
Trapped in a Purple Haze, 2000 (actor; TV)
The Virginian, 2000 (actor; TV)
The West Wing series, 2000 (actor; TV, one episode)
The Big Show, 2001 (narrator; TV)
Century Hotel, 2001 (actor)
The Day Reagan Was Shot, 2001 (actor; TV)
Final Jeopardy, 2001 (actor; TV)
Haven, 2001 (actor; TV)
Lola, 2001 (actor)
Pearl Harbor, 2001 (actor)
The Baroness and the Pig, 2002 (actor)
Benjamin Franklin, 2002 (narrator; TV)
Chicago, 2002 (actor)
Napoléon, 2002 (voiceover; TV)
Point of Origin, 2002 (actor; TV)
Sins of the Father, 2002 (actor; TV)
The Sum of All Fears, 2002 (actor)
Trudeau series, 2002 (actor; TV)
Widows, 2002 (actor; TV)
And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself, 2003 (actor; TV)
Highwaymen, 2003 (actor)
National Security, 2003 (actor)
Paycheck, 2003 (actor)
The Chronicles of Riddick, 2004 (actor)
The Deal, 2004 (actor)
The Eleventh Hour series, 2004 (actor; TV, one episode)
From Hong Kong to Hollywood: The Making of John Woo, 2004 (appears as himself; TV)
Remembering the Future: Paycheck & the Worlds of Philip K. Dick, 2004 (appears as himself; TV)
Empire, 2005 (actor; TV)
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, 2005 (actor)
Lies My Mother Told Me, 2005 (actor; TV)