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 Daniel DeSanto. |
LOS ANGELES — Home for actor Daniel DeSanto will always be Toronto.
But when he's in Hollywood, which is half the time, the party is at fellow Canadian star Russell Peters’ place.
“L.A. can be an odd place if you're not from here, so the Canadians keep it together by hanging together," the 29-year-old Italian-Canadian character actor says.
One homegirl who stops by is Montreal-born Elisha Cuthbert, a regular on the show 24, who brought over homemade mac and cheese for everyone on Thanksgiving.
“We talk about getting more work. Nobody here ever rests on his or her laurels, there's always another role to crack. We read scripts together,” he said. “And we always talk hockey, and go to the Kings games. People in L.A. are into baseball or basketball, but we're hockey all the way.”
DeSanto is promoting his new movie, The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, a violent fest of a film starring Peter Fonda, which premiered in Canadian theatres Nov. 13. DeSanto's character is a steely-eyed Italian mobster priest-killer, but he's proud of the role.
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“My parents came down for the L.A. premiere on Halloween and my mom was sitting right next to me, clutching me. She closed her eyes and shook when she saw what my character was doing on the screen. That's why I'm proud of this movie, I play a convincing character who is so not me."
When the handsome DeSanto — who has dozens of screen credits, including a role in the hit 2002 feature Mean Girls — isn't playing a bad guy, he’s proved capable of acting or voicing anything. He was once the voice of a major character on the popular Japanese animated show, Bey Blade, and is currently playing a teenager on the Disney TV show, Aaron Stone.
Hollywood — and Russell Peters’ digs — will have to wait until the new year, though.
DeSanto is back home for the holidays, eating his mother’s lasagna, working out, reading, writing and taking acting classes.
He says he plans to return to Hollywood in January for pilot season — the frantic period when actors go on dozens and dozens of auditions in the hopes of making it onto the next hit network series.
CALM BEFORE STORM: After a whirlwind final editing session that ended just last month, 55-year-old Ontario-born director James Cameron is preparing to make film history by taking long walks on the beach near his Malibu home and ordering hot tea from a local shop.
Avatar, a futuristic thriller, may be Hollywood’s most- expensive movie ever at a cost of more than $300 million and counting. Let’s hope his third big-budget jump is still the charm — Cameron was the first to go over the $100-million budget mark with Terminator 2 and $200 million with Titanic. Avatar is in theatres Dec. 18.
CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT: Napanee, Ont. pop star Avril Lavigne’s onetime BFF Brandon Davis is back partying all over town with Paris Hilton and former frenemy Lindsay Lohan.
Lavigne, until recently a key regular of Davis’ entourage, has been no where in sight.
On the other hand, Lavigne’s soon-to-be ex, Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley, has been painting the town red and looking very happy. On Nov. 12 he went to a party at Voyeur Nightclub in West Hollywood with a bunch of friends and exited a few hours later, laughing as he walked to his car with an anonymous but gorgeous strawberry blond (who looked like a tall Lavigne!)
massarellalinda@yahoo.com
Linda Massarella, a Canadian writer in Los Angeles, writes
every Sunday about notable Canadians living in L.A.