Viv Leacock doesn’t introduce himself as an actor, even though he’s logged an impressive number of film and television credits over the course of his acting career, including I Spy, Freddy vs. Jason, and 2012.
He similarly doesn’t introduce himself as a stand-up comedian, despite the years he spent making people laugh on the comedy club circuit.
Leacock would eschew all labels if he could, but if you’ve got to call him something, please call him an entertainer.
“I’m neither an actor nor a comedian. I’m a hybrid,” says Leacock, who delivers a scene-stealing performance in director Carl Bessai’s Canuxploitation laugh-fest Bad City, which screens at Vancity Theatre this weekend.
“I love to crack jokes. That’s just the way I roll.”
Born in Montreal and raised in New York City and Vancouver, Leacock remembers being eight-years-old and entertaining a room full of friends and family with hilarious tales about his parents.
“I remember my dad laughing. I’d made him laugh. He was the greatest storyteller,” says Leacock. “He knew how to work a crowd better than anybody I’d ever seen, and then I was doing it, and he was watching me doing it, and I’ll never forget that. That was it for me.”
Technically, though, his acting career grew from a single song. After turning in a particularly gripping vocal performance at a high school talent show, Leacock was approached by an agent who told him he could have a lucrative career in front of the camera.
With no training and acting (literally and otherwise) on instinct, the teenaged Leacock landed the first job for which he auditioned: a recurring gig on Neon Rider.
“I didn’t know what I was doing at all,” says Leacock. “I was bad. I wanted to be funny, so I was always making big Eddie Murphy faces. I never listened to anything anybody was saying. I was always doing my thing, no matter what they were doing. Those early episodes were just terrible.”
This was back in 1991, and Leacock wasn’t especially motivated to work on his craft, or even continue in the industry.
“The writing at the time for a young black male was very inflammatory,” says Leacock.
What roles were available were often one-note and poorly written.
“I did not have a lot of patience for the writing on the shows that I was auditioning for, or the stereotypes,” says Leacock. “I just couldn’t do it. I felt like I had a responsibility to not drop my people down a hole even more.”
And so Leacock left the world of acting behind him, and immersed himself in the world of stand-up instead.
It would be seven years before he would be back in the film and television biz, by way of an acting class he attended at the behest of his brother, also an actor. Reinvigorated and inspired, Leacock decided to make another go of it.
Leacock has been working steadily ever since. The roles are much better this time around, according to Leacock.
“I’ve played doctors, CIA agents, FBI agents, and detectives,” says Leacock. “I’m always some kind of government cop. I’m the guy that’s arresting the kids that I used to audition for.”
Highlights includes Intern Academy with Dave Thomas, Dan Aykroyd, and Matt Frewer, Carl Bessai’s Fathers and Sons, Becoming Redwood, and 2002’s I Spy, in which he acted opposite longtime idol Eddie Murphy.
“[Murphy and I] hung out for four months, and it changed my life as far as what I wanted, because I really wanted to be famous when I was a kid,” says Leacock. “I wanted to be famous, and I wanted everything that came with that, but he showed me that there is such a downside to it.”
What he wants now is to work, to laugh, to learn, and to enjoy the craft.
“To be involved in this world, and to be a working actor, I’m very proud of that, but it’ll never be the thing that takes me over and breaks me,” says Leacock.
In Bad City, Leacock is Billy O'Fitzsullivan, a by-the-book cop with the thickest of Irish accents.
“I had to learn how to speak with an Irish accent, and the saving grace that I had with that movie was I didn’t have to have a great Irish accent, because it’s basically a riff on Black exploitation films from the ’70s, and they’re not put together very well,” says Leacock.
“It was really interesting to be a part of [Bad City], because it felt like, ‘this is probably how these movies were made,’” he adds.
“[Back then], people just kind of showed up, probably a lot of them brought their own wardrobe, and they just did it. If you got the lines wrong, no big deal. If you saw the stunt man clearly during the take, no big deal.”
Bad City screens Aug. 7 at the Vancity Theatre. Can’t make the screening? Rent it right now at BadCityMovie.DotStudioPro.com/channel/badcity.
