Actors

Meet the Toronto teen voicing the biggest characters in the cartoon universe—including a PAW Patrol pup

“We are proudly Canadian and that comes through our approach, where everyone is welcome,” says acting coach Julian LeBlanc

Movies on Mandela, slavery and Hendrix head to Toronto’s film festival. Will awards glory follow?

He inspired Ricky Gervais, now he’s waiting for his close-up

A veteran character actor has his day in a tale of a Maritimer crushed by city hall

Aging movie stars are in no rush to give up the spotlight, and a good thing for studios, too.

‘Homeland’ offers another damaged-person role to the former star of ‘My So-Called Life’

Rick Porter at Zap2it writes about the relative lack of minority characters (again) on the 2009-10 schedule. He does so by looking at the percentage of lead actors who are minorities but the problem with current TV is not just a matter of percentages (which aren’t really that disproportionate). As Mo Ryan and others have pointed out, the cancellation of The Game and, more sadly, Everybody Hates Chris leaves TV almost devoid of shows that focus on African-American characters. The problem is not that TV isn’t colour-blind, but that it’s too colour-blind these days. The networks had many shows about black characters, particularly comedies, in the ’80s and ’90s — The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, Fresh Prince, Family Matters, to name only some of the big hits. And though these shows started to disappear from the major networks in the late ’90s, the WB (Sister Sister, The Wayans Brothers) and especially UPN filled the gap. Now UPN is gone, all its shows are gone, and black shows are pretty much gone.

According to Nikki Finke, the Screen Actors’ Guild strike authorization vote will take place in January (75% required to pass) and the results will be in on January 23.

Does it seem to you that Sydney Tamlia Poitier (his daughter) has become one of the unluckiest actors in TV? She’s been dumped from the revamped Knight Rider in its quest to re-revamp itself. Her last regular role was on Veronica Mars, where she was added to the cast after the pilot and then removed from the cast almost immediately. Before that, she had a recurring role on Joan of Arcadia in the first season, but did not appear in the second and final season. (Before that, she had her own sitcom on UPN, which was canceled after only 10 episodes, too soon for them to fire her and replace her with Sandy Duncan or something.)

Some entertainment-related labour news: