Eugene Levy
Eugene Levy is an actor, born 1946.
Levy spent eight years on SCTV, from 1976 to 1984, which is the best possible training for what he became: a performer who builds an entire person out of one bad decision and then plays it with total sincerity. The eyebrows do the work in the memes, but the actual method is a refusal to acknowledge that anything happening is funny.
The American Pie films made him famous outside Canada. He is the only actor in all seven of them as Noah Levenstein, the father delivering sex advice in the manner of a man reading assembly instructions aloud. The Christopher Guest films are where the best work is, and where he also writes: he co-wrote four of them with Guest, beginning with Waiting for Guffman in 1996, and won a Grammy in 2004 for the song A Mighty Wind. Mitch Cohen in that film, a folk singer visibly held together with string, is genuinely sad, and Levy never once begs you to laugh at him.
Schitt's Creek, co-created with his son Dan Levy and running from 2015 to 2020, handed him the late-career lead. Johnny Rose is a bankrupt video-rental magnate keeping his manners in a motel, and the part won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, one of four Primetime Emmys. He received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award in 2008 and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2011.
Movies (53)
- American Pie (1999)
- American Pie 2 (2001)
- American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006)
- American Reunion (2012)
- Over the Hedge (2006)
- Finding Dory (2016)
- American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005)
- American Wedding (2003)
- American Pie Presents: The Book of Love (2009)
- National Lampoon's Vacation (1983)
- American Pie Presents: Beta House (2007)
- Serendipity (2001)
- Astro Boy (2009)
- Splash (1984)
- Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)
- Heavy Metal (1981)
- The Man (2005)
- Curious George (2006)
- Father of the Bride Part II (1995)
- Like Mike (2002)
- New York Minute (2004)
- Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003)
- Marty, Life Is Short (2026)
- Best in Show (2000)
- Multiplicity (1996)
- Goon (2012)
- Taking Woodstock (2009)
- Armed and Dangerous (1986)
- Bringing Down the House (2003)
- A Mighty Wind (2003)
TV (16)
- Schitt's Creek (2015)
- Schitt's Creek (2015)
- Only Murders in the Building (2021)
- The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985)
- TRL (1998)
- Dilbert (1999)
- Second City Television (1976)
- Human Resources (2022)
- Reunited Apart (2020)
- Off Centre (2001)
- Greg the Bunny (2002)
- Primetime Glick (2001)
- The Reluctant Traveller with Eugene Levy (2023)
- Maniac Mansion (1990)
- George Burns Comedy Week (1985)
- The Journey of Allen Strange (1997)
Where to start with Eugene Levy
Begin with Best in Show. Gerry Fleck, a man with two left feet discussing it as though it were a medical footnote, is Levy at his most precise, and the Guest ensemble gives him room to improvise.
Then Waiting for Guffman for the origin of that partnership, and A Mighty Wind for the one with feeling in it, where his folk singer is played straight enough to hurt. Schitt's Creek is the obvious modern entry and deserves its reputation, six years of a man losing everything without losing his manners.
The American Pie films are the popular version and the first is still the good one. Splash is the early Hollywood credit worth a look, a scientist so committed to being right that he ruins everything he touches. Finding Dory and Over the Hedge cover the voice work if there are children in the room.
The Christopher Guest films
Four largely improvised mockumentaries he co-wrote, and probably his best work. Best in Show is the one to start with. Waiting for Guffman is the strangest, and A Mighty Wind gets him singing folk music entirely straight.
American Pie and the studio comedies
Jim's dad is the only character in all eight American Pie films, which is either an achievement or a sentence. The rest is the studio comedy of two decades, where he is reliably the funniest thing in a mediocre picture.
Schitt's Creek and the voice work
He co-created Schitt's Creek with his son at sixty-nine and finally won the Emmy, playing the straight man while everyone around him gets the jokes. The animation is the other late strand and pays extremely well.