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OTTAWA - Paul Gross was a hero, now he's a devil.
In last year's war epic "Passchendaele," Gross played a selfless Canadian soldier who returned to the trenches to protect his girlfriend's brother. Gross also wrote, directed and co-produced the $21-million project. This year, Gross reprises the "horny little devil" Jack Nicholson immortalized in the 1987 movie "The Witches of Eastwick." He's been jetting between Toronto and Los Angeles to shoot the TV pilot for ABC, alongside Rebecca Romijn of "Ugly Betty."
"It's kind of a long commute, but ... I can whip in, do devil-type things, and then fly out again," Gross said in an interview.
He was on Parliament Hill on Thursday as part of a series of events marking the Governor General's Awards for the Performing Arts.
He's receiving the special National Arts Centre award for outstanding contribution to the arts over the previous year at a ceremony Friday night, and will be feted again at a gala Saturday.
A few years back, he presented veteran actor Gordon Pinsent with one of the awards for career achievement.
"To just be involved with people like (director) Robert LePage and (composer) Murray Schafer, I don't know how to describe it ... it choked me up actually to be in a room with all of these people," he said.
"All of us toil away in various sectors of the arts, and not often do we get to be together. There's something about this evening that's kind of magical."
Gross' journey with "Passchendaele" was well documented. He spent years prodding donors to pony up the money for the movie that was a tribute to his grandfather, who had survived the hellish trenches of Europe during the First World War. It snapped up six Genie awards last month, including best motion picture.
"Now when I think about how long it took to put together, it seems completely insane, but I guess it's kind of the same mechanism that allows women to forget how horribly painful childbirth is and contemplate doing it again.
"You just kind of forget all of that and are left with the film and any experience you had in making it and if you're lucky enough having the pleasure of an audience embrace it."
Gross is now "tinkering" with a script that he coyly says is set in turn-of-the-century Rockies. But for now, he's enjoying the "holiday" of just acting.
Aside from the "Witches of Eastwick" he's also working on a Canadian western called "Gunless" in which he plays an American gunslinger who turns up in a small B.C. town.
The Calgary native has been in such TV series as "Due South" and "Sling and Arrows," and made his directorial debut in 2002 with the curling comedy "Men With Brooms."
Gross and other winners of Governor General's awards, such as dancer Peggy Baker and New Brunswick songstress Edith Butler, took in Question Period on Thursday, before hitting a reception thrown by House Speaker Peter Milliken.
While artists don't always feel in their element among politicians, Gross doesn't miss a beat when discussing the finer points of cultural policy and even the latest hearings of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications (CRTC).
Gross has been an outspoken advocate of federal funding for the arts, and has plenty of slings and arrows for the Conservative government on their $45 million in cuts last year.
"It shouldn't be viewed with the sort of general disinterest with which the current government has looked at it, for practical reasons it represents a fairly big chunk of the economy," he said.
"On a more nationalist stance, it really is what holds us together. We don't even have a train any longer, so the only thing we have in common apart from cheering a hockey team every four years is what we produce culturally, and that's central to how we view ourselves as a country.
"When it's left unattended by government, it has terrible consequences."
