Gil Bellows Does the ‘Unthinkable’

Canadian-born actor Gil Bellows is best known for his work on the television show Ally McBeal, where he played lawyer Billy Thomas. He’s also had a very lucrative film career, appearing in features such as The Shawshank Redemption, Love and a .45, and Paul Gross’s World War II drama Passchendaele, just to name a few. His most recent film, the psychological thriller Unthinkable, has Bellows portraying an FBI agent on the hunt for three nuclear bombs.

“It’s one of those films that works on two levels: If you’re looking for an intense, dynamic thriller you’ve got that, and if you’re looking for something that is going to probe you to consider big questions, it’s got that too,” Bellows tells CityNews.ca.

To prepare for the role, Bellows had to visit the Los Angeles bureau of the FBI, and train with agents who do the real-life job he portrays in the movie.

“I had a day of weapons training, a day following an agent around, and got to spend a day asking a group of field agents questions. It was kind of a crash course of what they do on a daily basis,” he says.

Bellows says he knew he wanted to be an actor when he was a teenager, the same time he met his Unthinkable co-star Carrie-Anne Moss at Magee Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. He says that working with Moss after all these years was “surreal and sweet.” He also says he’s “blessed” to work with people he digs, such as his other co-stars in Unthinkable — Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Sheen.

Being successful in both the television and film industry is something of a rarity for an actor, yet it’s something that Bellows seems comfortable with. When asked whether he has a preference between the two, he says, “The discipline of them is a little different…the ebb and flow is different. But they both have aspects to them that I’m very fond of.” He’s also done a lot of theatre and his passion for acting is inspiring.

“The great thing about acting is that, until you’re dead, you can do it,” he states. “There are aspects to it that as time goes on you hope you get better at, and there are a lot of things that I’m excited to explore,” he adds.

When asked if he would ever be interested in directing a film, Bellows doesn’t rule it out but, he says, producing is what he’s more interested in at the moment.

“I’m definitely stepping in the producer ring. I just produced this film for HBO called Temple Grandin that starred Claire Danes, David Strathairn and Julia Ormond. I’m going to do a lot more of that.”

He’s currently working on an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Swag, which he will produce and act in, and a film he co-wrote and will produce called All Along the Watchtower.

“[It’s] about a guy named Gene Roberts who was Malcom X’s bodyguard and then joined the Harlem chapter of the Black Panthers. When the “Panther 21″ were arrested and charged with over 150 felony counts, including conspiracy to blow up department stores and kill police officers and transport weapons, the star witness for the prosecution was Gene Roberts. The whole time, for about six years, he’d been an undercover cop,” he explains. 

Bellows is also producing an adaptation of the late Paul Quarrington’s novel, Galveston, that will be directed by Toronto’s Peter Lynch.

Unthinkable is available on DVD and Blu-ray on June 15.

brian.mckechnie@citynews.rogers.com

Top image: A scene from Unthinkable. Courtesy E1 Entertainment.