Arguably Canada’s hardest working actor, director and producer is back with a new film.
Paul Gross shot to fame as an RCMP officer in Due South and played a curling champ in Men with Brooms and a war hero in 2008’s acclaimed war drama, Passchendaele, which he wrote, produced, directed and starred in.
Now, he’s taken on the role of an American gunfighter.
“I think all actors secretly want to be in a western,” Gross told Metro prior to the Ottawa première at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, which he attended, yesterday. “I never imagined that in a million years, I’d ever be in a western.”
Despite being an American genre, Gunless does a great job with it, he said.
Gunless is the story of a misunderstood American gunfighter named the Montana Kid. After a lynching gone wrong, the Montana Kid, played by Gross, ends up in a tiny Canadian town called Barclay’s Brush. He challenges a blacksmith to a duel, only to find that being in Canada, the blacksmith doesn’t have a gun.
“Someone does have a gun, but it’s broken, and they have to order parts in,” Gross chuckled.
In the course of sitting around, the oddball town begins to rub off on him, changing him.
Gross, who saw the completed movie only days ago, called the movie “charming and sweet.”
“It’s a good sign when you’re watching a film you’re in and you’re laughing out loud.”
Canada makes interesting pictures, said Gross.
“I’ve been very lucky that a lot of the things I’ve wanted to do, I’ve been able to do here,” said Gross, who splits his time between Toronto and New York City, but has always considered Canada to be home.
“I would prefer to work at home, and make the things that I’m interested in making in Canada.”
His next project, Jerusalem, which he is writing, producing and starring in, follows a North American police detective who’s stationed in the city as a counter-terrorism liaison officer.
Gross had to learn to produce in order to do the 10-part series, which will air next year.
