Don McKellar named Canada’s George Clooney

Don McKellar named Canada’s George Clooney

Stellar McKellar pleases his fans at TIFF (Photo by Karon Liu)

Don’t get us wrong. We’re fans of Don McKellar, but it’s hard to see him as Canada’s version of Clooney, as the Montreal Gazette declares, or even as the nation’s “ultimate male role model.” (We’re pretty sure Sidney Crosby is the Canuck who’s setting young male hearts aflutter.) Cooking With Stella, the new comedy from Dilip Mehta, co-written with his sister Deepa, opens this week. In it, McKellar plays the husband of Maya (Lisa Ray), who struggles to accept class differences when the couple moves to India—with, presumably, hilarious results.

But it’s not just the Gazette gushing over Stellar McKellar’s artistic chops. Dilip is doing his fair share, too, telling the National Post:

Had I made him into the Terminator, if he was a surgeon or if he was a CIA operative, I’d say no problem. I asked him to play the quintessential Canadian; not naive, simple, a little apologetic, nice. To act that is not simple.

Maybe it’s a very Canadian thing, but I always feel very uncomfortable with people serving me. I’m awkward even with over-attentive people when I’m buying shoes. And certainly when I’ve been in circumstances with actual servants it just drives me crazy. I feel claustrophobic.

• Don McKellar’s New World ways meet Old [Montreal Gazette]
• For Cooking with Stella, Don McKellar took the heat in the kitchen just fine [National Post]