Enrico Colantoni credits his 'working class mentality' for his success on the screen

22:01Enrico Colantoni: Why the actor credits his “working class mentality” for his success

As the son of Italian immigrants, Enrico Colantoni says he was raised with a "working class mentality" that's helped him throughout his acting career.

In the '50s, Colantoni's father immigrated to Toronto where he took whatever job he could, including digging ditches, laying bricks and driving trucks.

"My dad was a 16-year-old kid shoveling snow for the Nazis while [Italy was] occupied by the Nazis in World War II," he tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "Once the war was over, Italy was suffering and he had the opportunity to come to Toronto…. Then my mom and my brother and my sister came. I was born in Toronto."

Today, Colantoni is one of Canada's busiest actors with more than 100 TV and film credits to his name, including Galaxy Quest, Flashpoint and Veronica Mars — but success didn't come easy to him at the start.

Instead of getting a stable job, like his parents had hoped, he decided to pursue a much more precarious career in the performing arts. He says he discovered his passion for acting after taking a drama elective at the University of Toronto.

"My teacher, Cathy Smith, was the first person in my life that said I could do this," he recalls. "My parents thought it was crazy. My friends thought I was nuts. And so Cathy was the only one who said, 'You know, you could do this.'"

Encouraged, Colantoni enrolled in one of the most prestigious acting schools in New York, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Following that, he went back to school at the Yale School of Drama.

"It wasn't until I graduated from the Academy and five years of hard knocks wondering how the heck am I going to get the job that I auditioned for the Yale School of Drama," Colantoni says. "But it was 10 years of just learning how to do it."

Eventually, Colantoni started landing roles in network TV shows that offered him some job security. He vividly remembers feeling both satisfaction and guilt when he told his parents about his growing success as a working actor. 

"When I got my first cheque, I wept for guilt, and the shame that I felt because I made more in one week than my dad would make in a year," he says. "I know how hard he worked, I know what his hands looked like, and I still feel that." 

His advice to young actors is simple: you have to work hard.

"Despite the struggles, despite the 10 years of eating ramen and not being able to pay your rent and seeing all your other friends getting work and success, you're still just aware of how [acting] makes you feel," he says. "Every time you get on a stage in front of like five people or 50 people or 500 people, it's the same sort of energy and the same sort of excitement. Then you keep doing it."

The full interview with Enrico Colantoni is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. He also talks about landing one of his first big breaks playing John Belushi on A Current Affair and developing his memorable character in Galaxy Quest. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Enrico Colantoni produced by Glory Omotayo.