- Born
- Birth namePaul Michael Gross
- Height6′ (1.83 m)
- Paul Gross is the elder of two brothers. He was an Army brat; his father, Bob Gross, was a Tank Commander in the Canadian Army. As a consequence Paul and his family moved around a lot: he has lived in Canada, the U.S, England and Germany. Paul was introduced to acting in his early teens, while the Gross family was in Washington. He performed in stage plays such as Canterbury Tales and Faustus. From the age of 14, he appeared in television commercials, which enabled him to pay for his degree in Drama at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
In 2011, Paul Gross appeared at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto playing Elyot opposite Kim Cattrall's Amanda in the celebrated comedy by Noel Coward, Private Lives.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- SpouseMartha Burns(September 25, 1988 - present) (2 children)
- Children
- Directorial debut: often playing role as a friendly close figure to the main protagonist
- Directorial debut: the story revolves around the Canadian military contribution
- While in Winnipeg, Canada to promote their movie Men with Brooms (2002), he and fellow co-star Leslie Nielsen received honorary citizenship from Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray at the Granite Curling Club on March 2, 2002.
- Received the Order of Canada on February 13, 2015 in recognition of his contributions to the Canadian performing arts.
- Composes and performs music with actor David Keeley
- 1998 Paul broke a rib while trying to cure himself of the hiccups by using the Heimlich Maneuver.
- Working on the television mini-series Slings and Arrows (2003) about a stage actor who takes the role of artistic director to stage the Shakespearean play "Hamlet". The play also stars his wife, Martha Burns.
- [His grandfather's confession that he cold-bloodedly killed a young German soldier led to Gross's fascination with the horror of Passchendaele] It was sort of like a hinge, and a door swung open at that moment onto a life of consequence or adulthood. I can't really put my finger on what it did, but it did change me. And I became very interested in conflict.
- [Of the 12 years he worked on the 'Passchendaele" screenplay] It was always sort of special. I remember Clint Eastwood talking about 'Unforgiven'. He really wanted to make it, and he'd take it out like an old treasured watch and he'd look at it - "Not this year" - and he'd put it back in his pocket. But it was always there. I always felt my script was like that.
- It's intriguing to me why the First World War started. It's intriguing that the war continued even after both sides recognized it was hopeless. And it's also intriguing that it ended so ambivalently, leaving the door open for the second one.
- [on how his nomadic childhood affected his career:] I think it has something to do with reinventing yourself. Every place you move into has a whole new set of rules and behaviours and strictures. So you kind of reinvent yourself to fit into that new environment. That possibly leads you to imagine that acting makes sense because you've developed a flair for becoming somebody else.
- [Commenting on English Canada's cinema being heavily focused on an auteur model] It's been stuck in that mode for a while. Festivals are composed of audiences that you never see replicated in a normal theatre. We've hidden behind this intellectual rampart. And we end up in this perverse situation where we assign to any failed film a great deal of intellectual integrity.
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