www.LucienLaCroix.com

NEWS
Saturday, November 4, 2006 

Nigel Bennett - Linacy 'Bad guy' up for best actor

By Sean Kelly
The News

He's been an imaginary pro-wrestler-turned evangelist, a 2,000-year old vampire and just about everything In between.

It’s Wednesday and Linacy resident Nigel Bennett is preparing to go to Vancouver the next day, for the 21st Gemini Awards. He's nominated for Best Actor in a Continuing Lead Role for At the Hotel, a CBC series directed by Ken Finkleman.

It's his fourth nomination, and come Sunday, it could be his second Gemini. The stage-trained actor has made his home in Linacy, moving here for a Canadian girl.

I sat down with Bennett at a local coffee shop for a conversation about movies, TV and Nova Scotia:

Q What was your last big project?

NB I just finished doing a pilot for a possible CBC series, called The Border and before that I was working on a Tom Selleck movie called Sea Change.

Q I wanted to ask a little bit about the film, the industry here. I always get the sense, though I don't see it very often, that there's a lot of potential for people to work in this province.

NB Oh yeah. I've done at least half a dozen small independent films. I did Bug and a Bag of Weed. I'm doing a film shortly called Pushing up Daisies, which is a local film by a local filmmaker Chaz Thorne. He wrote it and he's directing it as well. I start on that in two weeks time.

Yeah, there is a lot of film going on here, not just film coming from outside. A lot of people like to work here in Nova Scotia. The tax situation is very advantageous, there's a good strong pool of actors, and a good pool of technicians as well. And, of course, the province itself, the locations here are quite amazing. So a lot of American companies like to come here.

Q Many people remember you from the series Forever Knight, where you played a Vampire. For those who don't know, can you tell me about it?
NB It was an American series made up here. It was made for CBS. It was (scheduled) before Letterman came on the air. There was prime time, and then there was a slot right after prime time they called crime time after prime time. So we did our first year, and we were in that late time slot on CBS. And then Letterman was employed by them and we lost that time slot. But the USA network picked us up and we did another two years of it.

Q So it was from 1992-1996?
NB Something like that

Q Which in television isn't half bad?
NB Yeah, especially for a Canadian-made series.

Q Was that atypical, to have a Canadian-made series in that era?

NB. I mean, we were, (laughs) we were the first. We were there before Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all those other series, the vampire series, that is. And it was just another job. I went in and auditioned for it. They liked me and they auditioned me about six times more.

And mid-way through the first season, people started handing out these stacks of printed-out e-mails, from websites, that were like 'ah, this is great, this is wonderful. What is this series, where is it from' and it just took off in quite a big way.

Q So, a very dedicated following?

NB Oh, yeah. It was only supposed to last for one year and they campaigned vociferously to have It renewed . . . and they succeeded. So we did one year, and then there was an 18 month break between the first season and the second season.

But it just took off, and I still get people with questions about the show. I get e-mails from people. I get asked to go to conventions and make personal appearances. It's still there, it's still going.

Q I suppose that's the other side of it. Do you do much charity work, many conventions?
 

NB Yes, actually, I'm co-chairman and founder of a charitable trust called the motion picture industry charitable alliance, that's MPICA - because at the end of Forever Knight, part of my contract was that I had all my wardrobe, all my clothes. Well there were about 20 black suits and an awful lot of black shirts, and so I decided to have an auction down in the States.

We raised $60,000 in two days.

 Q Wow.

NB Since then, we're now in our ninth year, we've raised well over half a million dollars – and we just auction things off from series.

Q What does your schedule look like?

NB It's been very busy this year. I spent about four days here between the beginning of may and the end of September? I was in Toronto doing a series for the BBC, which goes to air next week, I believe, called The State Within, a political thriller and then I was down in Wolfville.

I leave tomorrow to go to the Geminis, and that's the fourth time I've been nominated and I've won once before. This time, it's for At the Hotel – a Ken Finkleman series on CBC and aired just in the spring of this year.

Q And who were you?

NB Oh God, I knew you'd ask me that. Ok, it's set at a hotel and the hotel is owned by a brother and a sister – I was the brother, and the sister was Martha Henry - and we both ended up getting nominated – but again, I'm not a nice guy in it. I was trying to poison her and sell the hotel out from under her.

Q So, kind of like a darker version of Fawlty Towers?

NB Kinda. And it was a very clever series, clever scripts. I have no idea if Ken, Mr. Finkleman is doing any more.

Q But if he were?

NB Well, in the last episode, I did get shot. However, I may not be dead. So, you didn't see me buried. That was the important thing.

Q Well, congratulations, that's cool.

By Shaun Kelly, skelly at ngnews.ca

from www.newglasgownews.com November 4th, 2006