| When is a comedian not just a comedian? When he's
also an actor. But seriously, folks, despite his rocket-like
success as a stand-up comic, Peter Kelamis has always been something
of a dramatist. That is, his humour is based less on jokes than
on detailed storytelling, in which this talented impressionist plays
the ensemble cast. Thedark-haired performer's background has provided
many different characters to draw on. Born in Sydney, Australia,
he was sent to the Greek Islands to live with his grandparents while
his family relocated and re-established themselves in Canada. Reunited
with his parents in Canada - and learning that his Greek grandparents
were in fact not Mom and Dad - the young Kelamis sorted out life's
cast of characters by imitating them.
When he ran out of relatives and teachers to imitate, he resorted
to slapstick or whatever was handy ("I would kill with the
fart jokes," he insists, sincerely), and he drew on material
gleaned from TV. "The breakthrough for me was watching Rich
Little do impressions on his variety show. I don't know why, but
that just fascinated me. So pretty soon I was doing his stuff and
cracking people up even though I had no idea who the hell Richard
Nixon was!"
Career driven since kindergarten he did his first stand-up act
in front of his grade 4 class - he solidified his stage ambitions
with a plum role in his high school's version of "Grease".
("I can't sing," he explains, "but the music was
really loud.") In the mid 1980s, he enrolled at the University
of British Columbia, taking a mix of psychology anddrama classes.
But schooling started to slip when he heard about a lunch hour amateur
contest sponsored by Punchlines Comedy Club. "I heard you could
win five bucks, and I've never looked back." In fact, it was
his firstpaying gig, and the "scrawny, hyper kid" soon
developed a following. He made ends meet as a banquet waiter, kept
at the stand-up, and excelled at improvisation in the Vancouver
Theatresports company. All this led to his first appearance at Punchlines
Comedy Club located in the Gastown district. "The experience
at UBC paid off. I hit the stage with about 15 minutes of material
already in my back pocket." He had his first headlining spot
within a year (extremely fast by even stand-up standards) and eventually
he opened for such comics as Howie Mandel and Dennis Miller. "I
got my first agent, got a few small parts, and was dropped like
a sack of hammers." The harsh realty of show biz realized. |
Bruised but not beaten, Kelamis rebounded
to experience the highlight of his career to-date: Improvising on
stage one-on-one with Robin Williams. "Robin came up to me
after the show and said, 'You're really, really funny.' I mean,
I didn't go to him, he came to me!" In fact, there was a casting
agent in the house at that gig, and he's barely stopped working
since. He got a new agent and after a few commercials, Kelamis began
landing straight roles in films and on TV.
He was a hit at the Montreal Comedy Festival ("There's nothing
like seeing Penn & Teller juggling at the buffet table")
and toured widely across Canada. Along with his own Comics
special on CBC, and a raft of on-going voice-over jobs, he has appeared
in more than thirty films, series, specials, and movies-of-the-week,
most of them in the past few years. Highlights include featured
appearances, often as straight men or deft technicians, on such
creep-fests as The Outer Limits, Sliders, The Sentinel, and
four different shots at The X-Files (plus a goofier part
on The New Addams Family). Guest-starring on the new E! Entertainment
 television
series Hollywood Off-Ramp, Kelamis dukes it out with the
devil and on the TV series Strange Luck, the producer loved
his character so much they wrote a whole episode for him. Instantly
recognizable for his dark hair, oversized eyes, and bow legs, Kelamis
has had notable film roles in Happy Gilmore, Fear Of Flying,
I'll Be Home For Christmas, Dog Show, and Richard Benjamin's
hilarious new The Sports Pages: The Heidi Bowl. He has a
recurring role in the Showtime series Beggars and Choosers,
in which he plays the head writer on a TV show.
"A lot of comics are doing straight roles these
days," he observes. "And I think it's because we know
so much about timing, about reading an audience. There is no mercy
in comedy: I mean, when you're a performer, silence is the loudest
sound you could possibly hear." For Peter Kelamis, life just
keeps getting noisier.
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