BRENT CARVER
Leonardo Da Vinci in "Leonardo: A Dream of Flight"
"To many of us, Leonardo is a mystery, a man of paradox," says Carver. "People often say that he had problems completing things," says Carver, "but I think, in fact, they were complete for him. He knew he was inventing things for the future, to be completed again and anew by those who followed after him. In this film, Leonardo is drawing inspiration from nature to understand the mystery of flying, but he's also a man of practicalities, living in the 'now', fulflling commissions demanded by others. In the tension this creates may be found the essence of his genius."
Brent Carver was raised in Cranbrook, B.C., the middle of seven kids. His father Ken drove a logging truck and then worked for the post office; mother Lois was a waitress and a department store clerk. Carver took readily to the arts--playing Dick Whittington in a Grade 5 play, singing in church and school choirs, and starring in musicals at Mount Baker Secondary School. Moving to Vancouver, he enrolled at the University of British Columbia, intending to study geography, but was soon drawn to the campus's thriving dramatic-arts community--the likes of Larry Lillo, Richard Ouzounian, Eric Peterson and Linda Sorensen. He loved performing so much that, at age 20, when a professional gig was offered to him--touring in three plays for children--he dropped out of university. It was a gamble, he admits, but "I knew then acting was to be my profession."
It was a gamble that paid off meteorically, with Carver winning raves and awards in virtually every performing genre. His first film, 1977's One Night Stand (directed by Allan King, who almost 20 years later was to direct him again in Leonardo: A Dream of Flight), won him an Etrog Award, the forerunner of the Genie. For his work on Canadian stages (he has performed in more than 60 plays), he has won four Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Best Actor: 1981's Bent, 1989's Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, 1993's Kiss of the Spider Woman and 1996's Highlife. (Taking Broadway by storm as Molina in some 500 performances of Spider Woman, he also won the coveted Tony Award.) His performance in the finale of CBC-TV's longrunning series Street Legal earned him a 1996 Gemini. Awards aside, he says, his personal satisfaction has also derived from the opportunity to work opposite the likes of Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronin in Foxfire and William Hutt in Long Day's Journey Into Night--both at the Stratford Festival, where he appeared in four seasons through the 1980s.
Always in demand, Carver uses "intuition and a hard look at the story" in choosing his roles. Having screened two of Devine Entertainment's films about composers--Beethoven Lives Upstairs and Bach's Fight for Freedom--he was delighted to be offered a starring role in Leonardo: A Dream of Flight, saying he was attracted to the project for several reasons: "The very word Leonardo, of course, but essentially I thought it was great that the same people--David and Richard--wanted to do a whole series on inventors. Their fascination fueled mine. Then to learn that we would be filming in and around where Da Vinci actually lived!"
Carver himself lives, with his golden lab Amber and black cat Licorice, in smalltown Southwestern Ontario, an easy commute to the theatre world of the Shaw and Stratford festivals and the multimedia milieu of Toronto.
The Story
The Life And Times of
The Filming of
Cast of Characters
- Albert Einstein: Light to the Power of 2
- Leonardo: A Dream of Flight
- Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants
- Marie Curie: More Than Meets the Eye
- Isaac Newton: A Tale of Two Isaacs
- Edison: The Wizard of Light
Contact us at info@devine-ent.com or call (416) 364-2282 to add
