Rise to Fame
A blown knee at 16 ended his professional ski career. A year working as a diamond driller in the Northwest Territories paid for acting classes in England. By the time he arrived in LA, he'd also toured as a guitarist in a rock band. Hollywood didn't quite know what to do with him for years. Playing JFK in Thirteen Days in 2000 changed that. The performance won him the Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor, and producer Roberto Orci cited it directly when casting him as Captain Pike in the Star Trek reboot.
In the Spotlight
When The Fall of the House of Usher fired Frank Langella in April 2022, Greenwood was cast as Roderick Usher within weeks. He spent the series weeping, crawling, coming apart, the opposite of every president and military commander he'd built his career on playing. Critics called it career-defining and specifically singled out his monologues. The show holds 91% on Rotten Tomatoes. A Netflix thriller called Trinity and a guest arc on Dark Winds Season 3 keep him in circulation.
Side Notes
He's played JFK, an unnamed president in National Treasure: Book of Secrets, and a fictional head of state in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. He's Canadian. Hollywood's default casting for the American commander-in-chief is a guy from Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. For over a decade, he's also been the voice of Batman in DC animation without most audiences realizing it. He removed an actual tooth he'd lost in a fight to make his character in The Sweet Hereafter look more battered. Turns out Hollywood needed one face for both Batman and the American president, and they found a Canadian.