Trivia: Multi-talented actor/writer Paul Gross stayed true to his Canadian roots and became famous as the crime-busting Royal Canadian Mountie in the TV series Due South. Born in Calgary, Army brat Gross was inspired by his high school drama teacher to become an actor, and he entered the University of Alberta in Edmonton to study the craft. Leaving school early to forge a dual career as an actor and writer, Gross appeared in several TV productions and wrote the screenplay for Atom Egoyan's TV movie In This Corner (1985). By the late '80s and early '90s, he began to score more prominent roles in Canadian and American films, including the Canadian TV movies Getting Married at Buffalo Jump (1989) and Cold Comfort (1990), the well-received TV adaptation of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City (1993), the marital dramedy Married to It (1993), and the skiing drama Aspen Extreme (1993). Gross also worked again with Egoyan as the screenwriter for Egoyan's 1993 TV movie Gross Misconduct. After appearing in the Canadian features Paint Cans (1994) and Whale Music (1994), Gross became a primetime regular when his TV movie Due South (1994), about a Mountie who heads to Chicago to track a killer, became a series. Running from 1994 to 1998, Due South's hunky fish-out-of-water hero earned Gross an avid following on both sides of the Canadian border. After Due South went off the air, Gross continued to stick with Canadian TV, starring in the telefilm Murder Most Likely (1999). In the several years to follow, Gross would find success with a number of TV series, like Slings and Arrows, Eastwick, Men with Brooms, and The Yard.

Trivia: One of Canada's fastest-rising actors, Callum Rennie (also known as Callum Keith Rennie) came into the business at an age when most actors are considered to be heading steadily over the hill. Rennie had his breakthrough when he was 34, starring alongside Sandra Oh in Mina Shum's acclaimed Double Happiness (1994). Nominated for a Genie (Canada's equivalent of the Oscar) for his portrayal of Mark, the endearingly geeky guy who falls in love with Oh's character, Rennie was effectively introduced to audiences across Canada, many of whom wondered where he had been for so long.Born in Sunderland, Tyne-and-Wear, England, on September 14, 1960, Rennie moved to Edmonton, Alberta, with his family when he was barely out of diapers. Raised as the second of three sons in a middle-class family, he first thought about becoming an actor at the age of 18 and began appearing in local theatre productions. Unfortunately, any career aspirations he had took a back seat to an addiction to alcohol, one that would control his life until he was 33. Drinking heavily, Rennie continued his involvement with the theatre, appearing in a number of stage productions, but his work -- which often met with substantial acclaim -- was largely overshadowed by his addiction. Things finally began to change for Rennie in 1993, when he got into a bar fight that resulted in glass in his left eye and a vow to quit drinking. His ensuing sobriety was accompanied by a change in his career, marked by an increasing number of supporting roles on various TV programs, including a recurring spot on the CBC's My Life as a Dog, for which he won a Genie. Rennie's 1994 screen breakthrough in Double Happiness opened the door for more screen work, including Bruce McDonald's wickedly good but woefully little-seen Hard Core Logo (1997), a pseudo rock documentary that cast Rennie as an aging punk rocker. He also landed a starring role on Due South, an popular Canadian TV series that cast him as a hard-bitten Chicago cop.In 1998, Rennie won one of the most important roles of his career to date in Don McKellar's Last Night. An acclaimed film about the end of the world, it cast the actor as a man intent on trying every possible sexual variation imaginable in the time he has left. Rennie won a Genie for his performance, which imbued the character with more charm than smarm and captured both his efficacious self-assurance and surprising awkwardness. The film also allowed the actor to collaborate again with Sandra Oh, as well as director David Cronenberg; the following year, Cronenberg cast him in a substantial role in eXistenZ.As the 21st century began, Rennie could be seen in The Last Stop as well as Christopher Nolan's breakthrough hit Memento. He jumped back and forth between small and big-screen projects such as Bliss, Dark Angel, The Butterfly Effect, Blade: Trinity, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, and 24, finding one of his biggest successes when he was cast in the AMC mystery series The Killing as Rick Felder.