The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Brent Stait had it made. Like many young men before him, he was fortunate enough to land a well-paying job at Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting not long after graduating from high school. Had he stayed at the company, continuing to work in the smelter or underground, his retirement would now be within eyeshot. But he had other plans. "I had nothing against the mine," says Stait, who was born in Snow Lake and moved to Flin Flon as a youth. "People make a good living there, but I went, 'This is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.'" What he did want to do Ð indeed what he needed to do Ð was act. The desire had been within him for as long as he could remember, and by the time he joined HBMS at 18, he could no longer deny it. So Stait saved up money from his mining tenure and began looking at acting schools. His natural talent was obvious when he was accepted to the renowned Ryerson Theatre School in Toronto, where he studied the craft for three years. That was more than 20 years ago. Today, the one-time Flin Flon Bomber is a successful character actor in Los Angeles and one of a lucky handful of people living his dream. "I'm 45 and I'm still acting because it's the only thing I really like doing," he says. "But you have to understand that when you're an actor, it's not all glamour and glitz; there's very little of that for most actors. It can be a tough job." Stait has played a wide variety of parts in more than 40 films, mostly those made-for-television, and over 30 TV series. He's shared the screen with big names such as Russell Crowe, Sydney Poitier, Martin Sheen, Catherine Zeta-Jones and the legendary Katharine Hepburn. His resume includes the Steven Spielberg miniseries Taken, the reunion movie I Still Dream of Jeannie, a biopic of troubled hockey player Sheldon Kennedy and and guest shots on TV shows such as The X Files, Highlander and Due South. Despite his body of work, Stait is not always a recognizable actor. He's more likely to elicit a "Haven't I seen you before?" than a "Can I have your autograph?" But for him, acting was never about the fame. "People outside of our business judge your career on how famous you are. That's not how I judge my career," he says. "Of course I'd rather be doing more films and having bigger parts, but I'm enjoying what I'm doing." Enjoy it he does. Stait laughs frequently as he shares secrets from the set, including a rather unique method he and his producers found to soak up the heavy perspiration he produced while wearing alien makeup for the sci-fi series Andromeda. "I would sweat so much in this thing that we couldn't find anything to stop it," he says. "So we got women's pads and put them on my head, under the latex. We always had this joke about whether it was going to be a two-pad day or a one-pad day." Stait also recalls how he wasn't the only Flin Flon connection to Mystery, Alaska, one of the few big screen features in which he has appeared. In one scene in the hockey comedy, it is revealed that Mike Meyers' character, Donnie Shulzhoffer, hails from the oddly-named mining town. "Mike just liked the name and he knew who Bobby Clarke was," recalls Stait. "I was going to lend him my Flin Flon Bomber ring from when we won the junior 'B' championship." No doubt many of the people who saw Mystery, Alaska found humourous the name "Flin Flon." Stait has found the same thing whenever he mentions his former hometown. "My buddy still can't get it right. He always says, 'Flim Flam,'" says Stait. "But you'd be surprised how many people have heard of Flin Flon because of Bobby Clarke. When I went to have my green card interview, the guy I talked to wasn't that impressed that I had worked with Russell Crowe, but he was impressed that my parents knew Bobby Clarke." In many ways, Stait's trek from subterranean Flin Flon to Hollywood has been an unlikely journey. He says some people doubted his aspirations, but he was never one of them. "I had one girl in theatre school say, 'Well, what if you don't make it?' and I said, 'Not make it. What does that mean?'" he says. "Of course I was going to make it. Maybe it was that cockiness that carried me through." Now more than two decades into his acting career, Stait may not be able to see his retirement from here, but he's having too much fun to notice. Brent Stait's selected filmography Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, 2002 (TV) Mystery, Alaska, 1999 (theatrical release) The Sheldon Kennedy Story, 1999 (TV) Roswell: The Aliens Attack, 1999 (TV) Titanic, 1996 (TV) Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog, 1995 (theatrical release) The Man Upstairs, 1992 (TV) I Still Dream of Jeannie, 1991 (TV) Omen IV: The Awakening, 1991 (TV) Cadence, 1990 (theatrical release) Selected TV appearances Battlestar Galactica, 2005 Cold Squad, 2003 Mysterious Ways, 2002 The Outer Limits, 2000 The Sentinel, 1999 Due South, 1998 Viper, 1998 Stargate SG-1, 1998 Poltergeist: The Legacy, 1997 The X Files, 1996 Highlander, 1995 Hawkeye, 1995 The Commish, 1993 Mom P.I., 1991 Neon Rider, 1990 Wiseguy, 1990 Katts and Dog, 1989 Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, 1988
