You’ve seen this face dozens of times on screens big and small. Over its long career, it’s been called upon to be menacing, knowing, wistful, kindly, and full of mystery.
The versatile face belongs to Serge Houde, a Quebec-born, Vancouver-based actor with a staggering 145 film and TV credits to his name.
He’s portrayed gangsters (The Kennedys), politicians (Hell on Wheels), principals (The Killing), and prison directors (Manners of Dying), and appeared in marquee films like 50/50 and The Score.
He works steadily in French and English, and his episode of web series Mortal Kombat: Legacy has clocked more than 8.5 million views. Recently, he received a Leo nomination for Best Guest Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series for his role as a drug kingpin on CTV’s Played.
As a prototypical character actor, Houde, 61, stealthily maneuvers between good and bad guy roles. It’s possible that this chameleon quality is an outgrowth of Houde’s atypical showbiz career: one that began at the age of 35, and was preceded by stints as a wildlife photographer and an advertising executive.
His interest in wildlife photography sprung from a light bulb moment in his childhood that occurred as he watched a nature program on television. “I realized someone was actually sitting with a movie camera and filming what I was seeing,” he says in a recent phone interview.
His passion for acting can be traced to a similarly transformative TV watching experience — but instead of a nature program, it was 1968’s The Lion in Winter, starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn.
But the interest in acting was to simmer for nearly two decades. “Acting was always in the back of my mind, but I didn’t know how to get into all that. So I followed my other passion,” he says. At 19, Houde ventured north and began photographing white bears.
Houde followed up those years in the wild with a business degree and the advertising career, during which he coordinated a massive campaign for IKEA in Montreal.
The creative for the IKEA campaign was developed in Vancouver, and it was through those contacts that Houde found himself in the 604 — a city whose film industry interested him to the point where he’d amassed a small collection of Vancouver film-related newspaper clippings.
Through the actors he hired to work on various advertising projects, he got the low-down on the how-to’s of the local industry.
Finally he took the leap, secured an agent and started booking work: first as a background performer, then as Stuart Margolin’s stand-in on Mom P.I., and finally as an actor.
The acting career has stuck with Houde in a way that the others didn’t — although Houde sees his previous careers as essential to his acting success.
“As a wildlife photographer, one of my things was observation, being able to sit and wait and watch and learn. That’s what I did [on sets]. It was probably the best class I could ever ask for.”
And now, he’s gearing up to walk the Leo red carpet and potentially take home a trophy for excellence in acting. “You can have your confidence and your passion, but at the same time, you want a certain amount of recognition. [The nomination] is another nod from the industry saying, ‘yes, you should be doing this.’”
Sabrina will be front and centre for all three nights of the Leo Awards (May 30, 31 and June 1). Follow @sabrinarmf and @wevancouver for tweets from the red carpet and watch WEVancouver.com for extensive coverage.
