Tony Nardi is a Canadian actor, playwright, and theatre director based in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

, who has performed on stage and in film and television. Fluent in four languages; he has appeared in French, Italian and English-language productions, including over 60 plays and 70 films and television series. He won the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role twice, for '' The Saracen Woman (La Sarrasine)'' (which he co-wrote) and '' My Father's Angel'', with three additional nominations. His series of monologues, ''Two Letters...And Counting!'', was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and earned Nardi a nomination for the Siminovitch Prize in Theatre long list. He has worked with Théâtre français de Toronto, Persephone Theatre, Great Canadian Theatre Company, and the Stratford Festival. He has also taught Acting and Directing courses at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

and

York University York University (), also known as YorkU or simply YU), is a public university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 53,500 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, ...

Career

Acting

Nardi made his stage debut in a 1978 production of ''Solzhenitsyn'', directed by Alexander Hausvater. Since then, he has performed in over 60 plays including ''For Those in the Peril on the Sea'', ''Sandinista'', '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'', ''La Storia Calvino'', '' A Flea in Her Ear'' and ''The Lesson''. He received a

Montreal Gazette ''The Gazette'', also known as the ''Montreal Gazette'', is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper which is owned by Postmedia Network. It is published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the only English-language daily newspape ...

Critic's Award in 1979 for his role in an adaptation of

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

’s ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', a Dora Mavor Moore Award for Artistic Excellence – Collective – in 1985 for ''La Storia Calvino'', garnered a Dora Award nomination in 2001 for his role in ''A Flea in Her Ear'', and a Dora Award in 2002 for Outstanding Performance for his role in ''The Lesson''. In 2007 he received a Best Actor Thespis Award for ''Two Letters''. His movie roles include '' Caffè Italia, Montréal'', '' Concrete Angels'', '' Cruising Bar'', '' The Saracen Woman (La Sarrasine)'', '' An Imaginary Tale'', '' Mr. Aiello (La Déroute)'', '' My Father's Angel'', '' Almost America'', '' Corbo'' and '' Kiss Me Like a Lover (Embrasse-moi comme tu m'aimes)'', and his TV credits include ''Rossini's Ghost'', ''Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants'', ''Bonanno: A Godfather's Story'', ''Almost America'', '' Il Duce Canadese'' and ''Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis''. A four-time Genie Award nominee, he has won twice for Best Actor for roles in '' The Saracen Woman (La Sarrasine)'' (1992) and '' My Father's Angel'' (2001), for which he had also received a Best Actor award at the Sonoma Wine and Country Film Festival in 2000. He received the Guy L’Écuyer Award for his role in ''La Déroute'' in 1998. In 2010, the year marking the 30th Genie Awards, he made the Academy's 30th Anniversary Top 10 list in the Lead Actor category in Canadian cinema – a ranking based on the number of wins and nominations over the 30-year period. In television, he received a Gemini Award nomination in 2006 for his role in '' Il Duce Canadese'' and a Best Actor Award at the Geneva International Film Festival, Tous Écrans/All Screens, in 1999, for his role in Ken Finkleman's '' Foolish Heart''.

Writing

Nardi is co-author with Vincent Ierfino of the play ''La Storia dell'Emigrante''. Written in Calabrian, English and French, the play was the first in Canada (on record) written by an Italian-Canadian and addressing an Italian-Canadian reality. In 1982 ''La Storia dell'Emigrante'' received the first James Bullet Award for Best Original Canadian play at the Ontario Multicultural Theatre Festival. ''A Modo Suo: A Fable'', written in Calabrian in 1990, received a Dora Award nomination for Best Play. An English translation was published in its entirety in the ''Canadian Theatre Review'' in 2000. He collaborated on the screenplays for ''La Sarrasine'' and ''La Déroute''. ''Two Letters'' (2006), two theatrical monologues based on two actual letters sent to a film/television producer and two theatre critics, received a 2007 Dora Award Nomination for Outstanding New Play. "...And Counting!" - a postmortem of "Two Letters" and journey into the state of culture and funding in Canada was presented in 2008 in Toronto and Montreal, at Factory Theatre and McGill University, respectively and in 2010 at the Festival TransAmeriques in Montreal. In 2008 he was nominated for a Siminovitch Prize in Theatre for playwriting. "Letter One", "Letter Two", and "...And Counting!" were filmed in front of a live audience and released respectively in 2011, 2013 and 2014. "Letter One" was screened at Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Montreal in 2011, at Hot Docs in Toronto in 2012 and the Italian Contemporary Film Festival at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2012. "Letter Two" was screened at the Italian Contemporary Film Festival at TIFF in 2013. "...And Counting!" was screened at the 2014 Italian Contemporary Italian Film Festival at TIFF. In 2013, "Two Letters...And Counting!" was published by Guernica Editions (Essential Drama Series). https://guernicaeditions.com/pages/authors In 2015 "Two Letters...And Counting!" was nominated for a Patrick O'Neill Scholarly Award. . https://www.cdtps.utoronto.ca/people/directories/graduate-students/tony-nardi In 2024 A Modo Suo (A Fable) was published (in English and in Calabrian) in the anthology "Canadian Plays of Italian Heritage" edited by Anna Migliarisi and co-published by Guernica Editions and constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati. https://guernicaeditions.com/products/canadian-plays-of-italian-heritage

Academia

Nardi began teaching acting and directing courses in Autumn of 2017. He has instructed courses at the

and

University of Toronto Scarborough The University of Toronto Scarborough (abbreviated as U of T Scarborough or UTSC) is a division of the University of Toronto and one of its three campuses, located in the Scarborough, Ontario, Scarborough district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. ...

, and directed courses at

. He is a PhD candidate in Performance at the University of Toronto, specializing in “the impact of cultural background and first language on performance in Canadian theatre, film and TV."

Honors

In 1992, Nardi received the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal, awarded to Canadians for significant contribution to their fellow citizens, to their community, or to Canada. In 2001, Nardi received a "Toronto Italian Filmfest Award for Major Contribution to Italian-Canadian Cinema" at the Toronto Italian Film Festival (Frank. A. Caruso, co-founder and head programmer) In 2002, Nardi was included in " Canadian Who's Who," "the standard reference source of contemporary Canadian biographies, listing 13,000 notable Canadians selected on merit alone." In June 2017, Nardi received a "Special Achievement Award" at the Italian Contemporary Film Festival (ICFF) in Toronto.

Personal life

Nardi is multilingual. His primary languages are French and English, but he is also fluent in both Standard Italian and Calabrian. Nardi lived in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

with Janne Mortil, his former partner, in 1999-2000.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

References

External links

*
Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia EntryFull text of "Two Letters ...And Counting!"Full videos of the three Letters.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nardi, Tony 20th-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Canadian male actors 21st-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights 21st-century Canadian male actors Canadian male film actors Canadian male stage actors Canadian male television actors Canadian male voice actors Canadian people of Calabrian descent Dora Mavor Moore Award winners Italian emigrants to Canada Living people Male actors from Calabria Best Actor Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners Canadian male dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Canadian male writers 21st-century Canadian male writers Year of birth missing (living people)