You might not recognize Lochlyn Munro by his name alone, but if you’ve been a filmgoer or television viewer for any stretch in the last 30 years, you’ve likely seen him in something.
Take a closer look at his face. It’s familiar, right? Munro’s stolen his fair share of scenes in movies like White Chicks, A Night at the Roxbury, Dead Man on Campus, and Scary Movie (“A small dick's like a disability, man!”) and on television shows like Northwood, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, NCIS, Castle, and Arrow.
To date, Munro has amassed nearly 200 credits – dramatic and comedic, indie and big budget, American and Canadian – many more than most actors working the Vancouver screen scene today.
Now, the prolific actor who grew up loving hockey and music in Lac La Hache, BC is poised to share his tips for surviving and thriving in the biz as part of the elite acting program at Vancouver’s New Image College.
Like generations of Canadian boys before him, Munro’s original life plan was to make it in the hockey sphere – but he broke his femur, and opted to pursue music instead.
It was while he was playing pubs in Vancouver and Whistler that Munro met people working in (or trying to break into) the local film and TV biz.
This was back in the day when the Vancouver industry was still in its infancy. Munro’s new friends spoke enthusiastically about acting classes and working as background performers, and his curiosity was piqued enough to make a go of it himself.
Munro’s first time on set was in 1988, when he logged some screen time as background on The Accused (the film for which Jodie Foster won her first Academy Award).
“You can see me at the end of the movie when they come out of the courthouse after they won the trial, and I’m standing on the steps while they’re sitting on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery,” says Munro in a recent phone interview from his Vancouver-area home. “I just thought it was interesting and something I thought I could do.”
Munro was, in his words, “lucky out of the gate. My first ever audition was for 21 Jump Street, and I booked the part,” he recalls. “I’ve been very fortunate to be able to work steadily for almost 30 years.”
Despite the fact that Munro is now easily recognizable for his work in a boatload of comedic flicks (including several by the Wayans Brothers), at the beginning of his career, Munro didn’t think he was all that funny.
“Up until I did Dead Man on Campus and Night at the Roxbury, I’d never really done any comedy,” says Munro. “I was doing all of those TV movies in the mid ’90s, and was always the guy that people would go, ‘oh, he can’t be the rapist,’ or ‘he can’t be the killer,’ and then at the end, yeah, he was.”
With comedy, Munro enjoys playing the realism. “I know sometimes my characters can be a little bit bigger, but I don’t try to play them big,” says Munro. “I try to play them real. Honest, with energy. You’ve got to have a bit of truth in comedy.”
Munro is hard-pressed to choose a favourite from among his many credits, although, when pressed, he offers up a guest role he did on Without a Trace.
“I hate to say this, but I’m still striving to play the part that I come home to my wife and go, ‘oh my god, this is so inspiring,’” laughs Munro.
But, according to Munro, he’s entering a new stage of his career.
“I feel like now, I finally get it. I feel like I’m now in the time where I really understand my job and I feel like now is when I’m going to get more opportunity to do stuff that is more interesting, and I feel like now my career will start,” says Munro.
And now that he gets it, he’s sharing what he knows with the next generation of actors.
He’ll be shaping young minds as part of the film acting conservatory program at New Image College, a Vancouver-based post-secondary institution offering real-world training in film and television acting, makeup and effects artistry and esthetics.
“I think really what I try to tell the young people is if you take care of the work, everything else takes care of itself,” he says.
“And it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Young actors always have that grandeur of being on The CW, but I think that they should learn that some of these young actors that move to LA to get on a TV show at 17, and have a five-year run on The CW, are done at 23. I feel like maybe the good advice would be to learn to be an actor before you [try to] be a star, and then that way you’ll have longevity.”
For information about New Image College, visit NewImage.ca.
