In our BC Day conversation with Greyston Holt, he tells us about stripping down, borrowing a friend’s big black lab, and running howling through the West Vancouver forest to get into character for a werewolf audition.
Greyston grew up on Salt Spring Island, dreaming less of Hollywood and more of a Marshall full stack and a cross-country tour. He wrote as much in his high school yearbook. Music came first: a hardcore post-punk band called The Mary Belle in Vancouver, three years on the road, and a booked cross-Canada tour he had to walk away from the moment his first series regular role came calling. He told us that acting felt like something he could pursue on his own terms, without waiting on four other guys and their schedules.
It’s paid off in a resume that reads like a tour of the genre landscape: the werewolf Clayton Danvers in Bitten, a vampire on Supernatural, young Emerson Hauser on Alcatraz, and a Leo Award for his gritty performance as a serial killer’s son in Durham County. This fall, he’s Detective Hudson Riley in Neagley, the Reacher spinoff on Prime Video, a role he called the biggest of his career and, in his words, a dream. He shot it through a Toronto winter and a Chicago heatwave in a suit and leather jacket, and took some time to enjoy the blues clubs in the Windy City.
It was revealing to hear how much of Salt Spring Island is still part of him.
He jammed onstage with Valdy at a Windsor Plywood Christmas party. He counts Harry Manx and Chilliwack’s Bill Henderson as fellow Islanders. And now he’s raising his daughter Sienna there with his wife, fellow actor Cristina Rosato, almost twenty years after he first left, exactly the kind of full-circle story we enjoy.
I ran into Greyston’s mom, Nancy, not long ago and watched her light up talking about his latest role. Catch the whole conversation, werewolves, vampires, Budapest, and all, on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP45PulsePodcast
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca.
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/