He has the rugged cool of a bad boy who has been to hell and back, looks better for it, and now humors the camera with good behavior. Hollywood stars tend to tumble through addiction and recovery after they get famous. But Vancouver native Rennie got it out of his system before he started. While working as a stage actor, he says he spent his 20s drinking. Then, at 33, he quit. "I got a piece of glass in my eye in a bar fight." He recalls, then adds, with laconic under-statement: "I thought, This has gone far enough.¹" Now 36, he has been acting in film and TV for just four years, but is racing to catch up. While living in Vancouver, he paid his dues playing criminals in TV series such as The Commish, Lonesome Dove, The Highlander and The X-Files. In 1993, he turned heads with a feature role opposite Sandra Ho in Double Happiness. He dismisses the character as "a vacuous middle-class male," but his talent in the role was obvious.

As a recovering junkie in Curtis¹s Charm, Rennie finally got to show some edge. Then, playing a laconic guitarist in Bruce McDonald¹s punk rockumentary, Hard Core Logo, he displayed something rare in Canadian cinema, the quietly smouldering charisma of a movie star. This fall, replacing David Marciano, Rennie will co-star with Paul Gross as the new cop sidekick in CTV¹s Due South. But in case anyone thinks this actor is going straight, Rennie is quick to point out: "I play a cop like a I play a bad guy."