It’s in the credits for critical productions, whether it’s “Chronicles of Riddick,” or the cult “Bon Cop, Bad Cop,” “Thor” or “My Salinger Year”, available on VOD. Colm Feuer is a polymorphic actor who has always switched between Hollywood and cinema in our country. With his liveliness and usual sense of humor, he takes us into his cinematic world.
Colm, what is your first memory of cinema?
My grandfather was the director of Cinema Metropole in Dublin, Ireland. When you retire, replace employees who have gone on vacation. My Irish parents used to send me there for summer vacation. Sometimes I would go to work with him. There he put me in the projector room. I watched the Clint Eastwood movies, The Great Strangers Eating Chocolate. It’s not a “Cinema Paradiso”, but it was an intimate relationship with the machine that projected the pictures. I must be 12 or 13 years old. After a few summer, I was in a small village in Ireland with my cousins, we went to the movies and there was Clint Eastwood again. I saw “Gold for the Brave.” […] While working for Mr. Eastwood at The Exchange, I told him it was one of my first contacts with the cinema.
Did you know when you were young that you wanted to be an actor?
never! I was in elementary school in Windsor in French. And I was asked to be part of a play. I didn’t want it, but I accepted. It started again in high school. When I finished high school, one of my teachers told me that I could get a career through it. My parents wanted me to go to college to do something important. Actor, it was just silly. Especially since my father was a doctor. He wanted me to work in government, in the FBI since I was born in Boston, or in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police since we lived outside detachment. […] You know, I became Canadian for “Trudeau,” the Canadian radio TV series, because I told myself an American couldn’t play it.
Your first movie?
My father, who is Irish, sent his children to a French school … Imagine … my father took us to the Ontario Film Club in Windsor. One evening, we saw “Le souffle au cœur” by Louis Malle. It is an exceptional movie. There is a moment the teen sleeps with his mother, played by Leah Massari. My dad turned white and told me never to tell my mom this.
Are there any movies that you want to show your kids?
Oh yes! After they refused to watch “Thirty-two short films about Glenn Gould” [qui m’a demandé deux ans de sacrifices]We started with “Laurence d’Arabie”. Then “The Godfather” and “Chinatown” and “Souffle or Coeur” and then Jack Tate’s films.
A movie that hit you when you were a kid?
I don’t know how old I was, and I have really had the pleasure of working with him on several occasions. This is Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Back. And even today, as soon as I see a red raincoat, I have goose bumps. That doesn’t make any sense!
Your first “kick” on the big screen?
I feel shy … at the time, I was finishing high school. I took my girlfriend at the time to see “Rocky”. I memorized the dialogs, gestures, and everything. I believe in it! When I got to first improvisation class, I imitated Sylvester Stallone. For an Irish Canadian, there is nothing more stupid than wanting to play an Italian-American boxer. But there was just something about this “external” myth rising to the top.
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