b. July 12, 1930, Grand Falls, Newfoundland

Actor, playwright, screenwriter, author and director, Gordon Pinsent is one of the finest, most beloved and well-known actors of his generation and an icon of the Canadian entertainment industry. Multi-talented, enterprising and outright entrepreneurial – he has seemed at times to be a one-man production company – his trademark restlessness and lack of satisfaction has driven him to develop many of his own projects and produce them wherever and whenever he could. A born-and-bred Newfoundlander whose work often reflects his Maritime values and upbringing, for fifty years he has written for, acted and directed in virtually every entertainment medium available.

 
An awkward child who suffered from rickets and was nicknamed “Porky,” he escaped into his imagination and dreamed of performing as early as he can remember – he even told his Anglican mother that he wanted to convert to Catholicism because the Catholic schools put on plays. He left home at fifteen to live with his sister at the Gander Air Base and at seventeen – a year before Newfoundland’s entry into Confederation – he emigrated to Toronto, where he worked a series of odd jobs before enlisting in the airborne parachute unit of the Royal Canadian Regiment. After being stationed for a year in Fort Churchill in northern Manitoba, he was discharged in 1951 and went to Winnipeg, where he worked a series of odd jobs that included patrolling parking meters and teaching ballroom dancing at Arthur Murray Studios.

 
In 1954, he began acting with the Winnipeg Repertory Theatre. From there, he went on to work with Rainbow Stage, the Winnipeg Little Theatre and Theatre 77 throughout the fifties. He also worked in radio – including a stint on the first live radio drama out of Winnipeg – before moving to Toronto in 1959. While painting portraits to pay the bills, he worked in theatre and radio and in 1962 starred in the Crest Theatre production of The Madwoman of Chaillot, where he met his current wife, the actress Charmion King. That same year, he worked in the cast at the Stratford Festival and made his TV debut on the U.S. series “Hallmark Hall of Fame.” He also landed a regular role on the Canadian series “Scarlett Hill” and played the Mountie Sergeant Scott on the hugely popular children’s series “The Forest Rangers,” which is still broadcast around the world.

 
His big break came with the lead role in the CBC televisions series “Quentin Durgens, M.P.,” which ran from 1966 to 1968 and made him a national star. Encouraged by his success, he ventured to Los Angeles where he scored a supporting role in Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and played the president of the United States in Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969). He also became close friends with Marlon Brando (several sketches that Pinsent had given Brando as gifts were included in Brando’s estate auction in June 2005). However, his time in Los Angeles was largely characterized by frustration and discouragement. Essentially a versatile character actor, his efforts to land a leading role in a TV series or significant parts in film were consistently dashed. His work in television amounted to guest roles in numerous series, including “Hogan’s Heroes,” “Cannon” and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” while his film work included the likes of a supporting part in the Blaxploitation classic Blacula (1972).

To cope with his frustrations, he began writing short stories based around characters he had developed. One of these – a semi-autobiographical tale about a happy-go-lucky Newfoundland roustabout named Will Cole – was evolving into his first novel when he decided it might make a fine film and completed a draft of a screenplay before the novel was finished. The result was the Canadian classic The Rowdyman (1972), which was filmed in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and produced through the newly formed Canadian Film Development Corporation (CFDC, now Telefilm Canada). The film became a commercial hit and landed Pinsent a Canadian Film Award for Best Leading Actor. The Rowdyman was published as a novel in 1973. Pinsent, having returned to Canada to continue his career, subsequently wrote, directed and starred in an unsuccessful stage musical based on the film at the 1976 Charlottetown Festival in Prince Edward Island.

 
Continuing his affinity with Maritime rogues, he published his second novel, John and the Missus, in 1974. The story of a copper miner who rebels against the company when it plans to shut down the mine that sustains a small Newfoundland town, John and the Missus was produced for the stage – first in 1977 at Halifax’s Neptune Theatre and again in 1981 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa – before Pinsent wrote, directed and starred in the feature film adaptation in 1987, which earned him a Best Leading Actor Genie and a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. In the late seventies, he continued his DIY ethic by creating, writing and starring in the CBC series “A Gift to Last,” which, in keeping with his multi-disciplinary approach, was also produced for the stage in Vancouver and Barrie, Ontario. He co-starred in Allan King’s multiple award-winning Prairie drama Who Has Seen the Wind (1977) and in 1980 he won a Best Supporting Actor Genie for Peter Carter’s Jack London’s Klondike Fever.

 
Though he has been performing for decades, he made a new legion of fans in the nineties with his recurring roles on such popular television series as “Due South” and “Power Play,” which both earned him Gemini Awards. He also had a recurring role on “The Red Green Show” and landed guest spots in numerous series, including “Street Legal,” “Road to Avonlea,” “The Outer Limits,” “Made in Canada” and “The Eleventh Hour.” In 2001, he scored the plum role of Billy Pretty in Lasse Hallström’s adaptation of E. Annie Proulx’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Shipping News, co-starring Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench and Julianne Moore. Pinsent helped coach the rest of the cast in a Newfoundland accent and also advised on the authentic use of clothes, music and props.

 
He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1980 and became a Companion in 1998. In addition to his Canadian Film Award, six Geminis and two Genies, he has won two ACTRA awards for his television work – as well as the ACTRA Award for Excellence in 2004 – a Dora Mavor Moore Award for the stage, and has been awarded three honourary doctorates – from Queen’s University, P.E.I. University and Memorial University in Newfoundland – and three Lifetime Achievement Awards – from the Banff International Television Festival, the Summer Institute of Film & Television in Ottawa and the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television. His hometown of Grand Falls, which named a street after Pinsent in 1980, plans to rename their Arts and Culture Centre The Gordon Pinsent Centre for the Arts on his seventy-fifth birthday in July, 2005. He is also very active in charity work and has extensively lobbied the federal government for more cultural funding. His humorous and poignant autobiography By the Way was published in 1992.