A DOWN-TO-EARTH
RISING STAR

BY ANDREW VOWLES

Back in the mid-1990s, Hollywood might have looked like nothing more than a distant star for Kenneth Mitchell. Sure, he'd taken that one intro drama course as an undergraduate student at U of G, but he'd spent far less time in Massey Hall than he had across campus, dreaming up designs as a talented landscape architecture student or setting up plays as a striker for the Gryphon soccer squad.

But it's the same Kenneth Mitchell who dons a hockey jersey to portray a real-life American Olympic hopeful in the Walt Disney film Miracle that opened in early February. Speaking over the phone from Los Angeles - his home of the last 18 months - he traces his path from U of G through a brief stint as a practising landscape architect in Guelph to his current role as an aspiring screen actor in Tinseltown.

Drawn more to film than television, he says he's more interested in character development than in plot summaries. But he allows there's a theme that knits together those varied experiences, even his years rooming in an all-male residence at Guelph and even further back to his early days as a summer camper near hometown Toronto. Sum up that theme in a single word suitable for a movie marquee, and it would probably read: Brotherhood.

Take his latest role of Ralph Cox, a talented but conflicted player who was the last man cut from the roster of the U.S. Olympic hockey team before it performed the so-called "miracle on ice" by scoring a landmark victory over the Soviet Union in Lake Placid in 1980. Directed by Gavin O'Connor, the film stars Kurt Russell as team coach Herb Brooks.

The production company did a North America-wide casting call in several hockey cities, including Toronto, Boston and Minnesota, seeing about 2,000 people in all. "You had to prove you were a high-level hockey player," Mitchell says. Having missed the initial clinics, he drove from Toronto to Los Angeles in late 2002 with his hockey equipment, shot a tape of himself on the ice and sent it to the producer.

He'd initially auditioned for the role of team goalie Jim Craig. That part ended up going to Eddie Cahill, who had a recurring role on Friends before making his movie debut in Miracle. But the casting crew liked Mitchell enough to ask him to audition for the role of Cox.

They spent six months filming Miracle in Vancouver. Most of the "team" had played hockey, including Mitchell, a former AA and AAA net-minder with the Willowdale Blackhawks. Still, he faced a month and a half of on-ice training to catch up.

"I had to elevate my game to get up to speed with these guys. Where they helped me out with hockey, I helped them out with their acting chops."

Preparing for the part involved meeting with the real-life Ralph Cox and picking up on aspects of his personality.

"I knew Ralph really loved music," says Mitchell. "I listened to Led Zeppelin every day before filming to help me get into character."

He says it was important to him to portray Cox realistically on the screen, including his reaction to the devastating news that he had been cut from the team shortly before the 1980 Olympics. A natural response might have been to throw around a few chairs in a fit of anger.

"The thing I found out was that Ralph was really cool about it," says Mitchell. "He left with dignity and pride. I think that shows a lot of character."

One newspaper article after the movie's release described how Cox's daughter was moved to tears watching Mitchell's character learn that he had failed to make the team. Getting that kind of response "is the ultimate compliment in doing this job," says Mitchell. "That just put the biggest smile on my face."

He says working with Russell taught him about dedication to the craft and the importance of being prepared. "He's a big action star, but he's also a very kind, giving person."

Since completing the movie, Mitchell has been discussing a new independent film based on a novel by a Toronto writer that includes the character of a canoe instructor at a summer camp. If portraying a hockey player was like a homecoming of sorts for Mitchell, acting on the set of a summer camp would be like a second childhood.

He spent summers at Kilcoo Camp in Minden, attending first as a camper before graduating to camp instructor and counsellor.

"That was a big part of my life," he says. "It taught me many things about people, friendships, love of the environment, learning to laugh and cry, learning to appreciate people, love and dance."

The experience also gave him his first chance to perform. "I loved to do skits in front of everyone. I loved to play guitar at campfires. That's where I say it all started - Saturday skit night."

He attended a high school for the arts in Toronto, mixing up everything from acting to painting. Looking for a way to combine his artistic bent with something that offered more secure career prospects - "I didn't want to become a starving artist" - he chose landscape architecture and U of G.

Although Mitchell did take that single drama course at Guelph, he spent much of his extracurricular time on the soccer field. In his last year, he tore a knee ligament and ended up sidelined for about half the games.

"That was emotionally draining. I can relate to some of those feelings about what it would be like to be cut before the Olympics. When I got to slip on that jersey that represented an Olympic-calibre team, that was really special for me. My mother says I got to marry my childhood dreams of being an athlete with my current passion for acting, and that's why Miracle was such an ideal job for me."

Anyone attending convocation at Guelph in 1998 might have assumed that Mitchell's ideal job would have been of a markedly different sort. He'd spent five years studying landscape architecture, including a final year in Australia, before graduating with a silver medal from the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects.

Indeed, he went to work right away in the landscape architecture department of ESG International Inc., an environmental consulting firm based in Guelph (since acquired by Edmonton-based Stantec Inc.). There, he worked on designs of trail master plans - including the TransCanada Trail - the City of Toronto bicycle master plan and a multi-use outdoor sports facility for Guelph. He says he enjoyed the work and appreciated the flexible hours that allowed him to fit in occasional round trips to Toronto for auditions.

While still working in Guelph, he had begun to get parts in television commercials for everything from athletic gear to potato chips to beer. After transferring to ESG's Toronto office, he met an agent and began working with acting coach David Rotenberg, learning to prepare for parts and how to listen and "be present" in a scene. Mitchell says he even found himself drawing on aspects of his undergraduate program, especially presentation and social skills.

Retired landscape architecture professor Walter Kehm recalls bumping into Mitchell a few years ago in Toronto and wasn't surprised to learn he was switching to an acting career.

"He always mimicked my mannerisms," says Kehm, who found out near the end of Mitchell's program that his student had kept all of Kehm's pen-and-pencil critiques of his projects. Mitchell gave him a collage of the sketches and performed a brief send-up of the professor, mimicking his stance and gestures. "He's a character," says Kehm.

Mitchell landed his first major role co-starring with Gena Rowlands in Charms for the Easy Life in 2000. That led to a part in the sci-fi movie Odyssey 5, which subsequently became a TV series with Mitchell reprising his role as a young astronaut. Then came a part in The Recruit with Al Pacino and Colin Farrell. He also performed in the short film Why Don't You Dance?, which premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival.

Starting to feel like the proverbial big fish in Toronto, Mitchell headed out to Los Angeles. Now 29, he lives with his girlfriend, Susan Pratt, an actor he met three years ago on the set of Charms for the Easy Life. With both of them busy on the L.A. audition circuit, it's Guelph that is a remote star today, although one that he recalls fondly.

"I love the smell of freshly cut grass, and I still love it to this day because it reminds me of soccer and reminds me of Johnston Green," says Mitchell, who still subscribes to a landscape architecture journal and works on his parents' home garden when he visits Toronto.

While at Guelph, he roomed in Mills Hall - then an all-male residence - with another landscape architecture student who is still his best friend. Working on Miracle "was like reliving my university days," he says. "I was living in an environment with a great group of guys much like I was in university."

His latest on-screen character might have seen his dreams quashed, but like more than a few neighbours in Los Angeles, Mitchell's got hopes of his own.

"People are recognizing the film. Now it's a matter of meeting new producers and directors for new projects."

That means a merry-go-round of auditions, looking for the next right part. Mitchell says he's cut out less for roles that call for the chiselled good looks of a Tom Cruise-style leading man and more for "soulful" characters played by the likes of Edward Norton, Jeff Bridges or Sean Penn. "These are guys with great souls," says Mitchell, whose favourite movies include Shawshank Redemption and You Can Count On Me.

"I love the feeling I get performing for people. I love to provoke emotions in myself and have an outlet for my emotions. I love to see people laugh and cry."