When I started acting, my mom said, "If you want to go to film school and eventually direct, being on set is probably the best film school in the world." I'm incredibly grateful for the career I've had, but I was an actor to be a part of movies and TV, not the other way around.

It's something I want to do going forward - make a movie that is commercial and universal and will play in any movie theater or living room in the States or the UK, but is definitively Canadian. I don't think there's such a thing as prohibitively Canadian.

There's a chunk of myself in every part I play...

What I do for a living and how I unwind are one and the same; it's a rare special thing.

I'm a chronic ad-libber. So whoever hires me, often to their chagrin, should know that I will be talking a bunch of smack.

I guess I always have sort of general ideas, but the best stuff would be the stuff that comes to you in the moment, always.

Montreal is a great town. There's equal parts blue-collar town.