It's a bit jarring, at first, to realize that the man with the wild, porcupine eyebrows is actually a very serious guy.
Actor/comedian Eugene Levy - who had audiences in stitches walking around, literally, with two left feet in the film Best in Show - starts off this interview apologizing for the fact that his life "is not all that interesting."
Hardly an auspicious start to what one hopes will be a lively conversation about what the improv guru draws on for inspiration on stage and the big screen.
But Levy is nothing if not pragmatic, and truthful.
"I've said everything," he explains, sitting in a winged chair in a demure suit and crisp striped dress shirt. "I don't think there's anything I haven't already said in an interview. So I feel badly for the reader, and I feel sorry for the reporter. Hearing me say the same old things, over and over again."
The pressure is on, then, to figure out some snappy way to elicit fresh responses from Levy, who has agreed (and you know it's got to hurt) to a day's worth of interviews with media outlets. He's here to promote the eight new inductees to Canada's Walk of Fame - and more specifically, the live, two-hour special he is hosting tonight at Toronto's Hummingbird Centre, which will air on CTV Sunday.
Other journalists leave the bar of Toronto's Windsor Arms Hotel muttering about how tough an interview Levy is - unforthcoming and, frankly, not that funny. But the truth is Levy is just a reserved, slightly neurotic guy with a quirky, almost nerdy sense of humour.
And it's exactly these so-called "hang ups" that are responsible for some of his best performances - like the left-leaning dog walker in Best in Show that led one critic to compare him to a shopping cart with a bad wheel.
When Levy is forced to "perform" one-on-one in closed quarters he clams up. But when he's in the company of actors he trusts and respects - like fellow SCTV alumna Catherine O'Hara (a Walk of Fame inductee) and the late John Candy - the real Levy blossoms and can be an absolute blast. Who can forget his turn with Candy as the Schmenge brothers, Stan and Yosh? The world-class polka band from Leutonia - "And ve are … der Happy Vanderers" - whose schtick was so hilarious HBO documented a feature film on the lederhosers called The Last Polka in 1985.
The best insights into what makes Levy tick come when he voluntarily wanders down memory lane.
His favourite co-star is O'Hara, whom he met in 1974 when she was a waitress at Second City Theatre, and he was in the cast. Since then, the pair have teamed up on countless SCTV skits as well as director Christopher Guest's trilogy of films, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration.
"We approach our character work the same," says Levy, who is also now working on a film screenplay with O'Hara. "We draw parameters around what we think is apropos for a given scene, and they seem to line up in the same direction.
"We veer comical and we veer serious, and we're always moving together on that," says the 60-year-old Levy. "Besides that, Catherine is just as insecure as I am. You want to see two insanely insecure people you should have seen us backstage when we took Mighty Wind on tour. We were pathetic."
Toronto-born O'Hara remembers meeting Levy for the first time and being struck by his "funny hairdo."
"I liked him," says O'Hara, who now lives in L.A. "We actually dated a few times but it didn't work out. Luckily we never got past the point of friends just trying to date - so we remained friends."
(Their most recent collaboration was in the animated feature Over the Hedge, where Levy voiced, um, the porcupine Lou, and O'Hara played his prickly wife, Penny.)
O'Hara figures she and Levy click as performers because they "know and trust each other, which is a beautiful way to start any job."
"He's a solid guy. Really funny and a smart writer," adds O'Hara, who will have many of her six siblings - including her singer/songwriter sister Mary Margaret O'Hara - on hand for today's Walk of Fame ceremony.
"He's serious about being funny. He's very relaxed in his work. When he's nervous, I'm usually nervous, too. At the beginning of a Chris Guest job we're afraid to open our mouths because once you do, that's your character. But we do laugh when we're dying."
Levy says he can appreciate "the pure audacity" of the new generation of comedians - the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen - but the hard edge of scripts like Borat leave him cold.
"I can't do comedy that is cutting and vicious," he says. "If I knew I'd said something that was going to make someone feel bad, well, that supersedes everything."
Hamilton, Ont.-born Levy started out earning $60 a week as a coffee boy on an early film by director Ivan Reitman ( Ghostbusters, Animal House, Meatballs). He got his break when he won a part in the Toronto stage production of Godspell, along with other fledgling talents Gilda Radner, Dave Thomas, Paul Shaffer and Victor Garber.
It was while Levy was working on Godspell that he happened to take in a stage play across town called The Stag King, which featured a young John Candy, who remained a close friend of Levy until he died in 1994, at the age of 43.
"At the time, I didn't know John, but I noticed him in the show," recalls Levy. "He stood out, and he wasn't big [overweight]at the time. It was his presence, his voice, his sense of comedy - your voice went right to him. John was a movie star."
To this day, Levy believes Candy is one of the most under-rated actors of his time. And he points to 1987's Planes, Trains and Automobiles, where Candy and Steve Martin get stuck together trying to get home for Thanksgiving, as one of his all-time favourite films.
"It encompassed all the great things about John," Levy says of Candy. "Great character. Funny scenes. And it kind of made you cry. You just feel for John through the whole movie. It is superb acting."
Levy refers specifically to the so-called Bravewood Inn scene, where a fed-up Neal Page (Martin) blasts a stream of nasty insults at Del Griffith (Candy), only for Del to turn around and say: "You wanna hurt me? Go right ahead if it makes you feel any better. I'm an easy target. Yeah, you're right, I talk too much. But I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you, but I don't like to hurt people's feelings. So you go right on and think what you like about me. But I'm not changing. I - I like me. My wife likes me. My customers like me. 'Cause I'm the real deal. Whatcha see is whatcha get."
And that pretty much sums up Levy's style of comedy - good, clean fun without any mean bones on the body.