You’ve seen Enrico Colantoni in everything from ‘Veronica Mars’ to ‘Station Eleven.’ The secret to his success? He loves to work

There’s a reason you’ve seen Enrico Colantoni’s face in everything from cult hit “Veronica Mars” to “Star Trek” spoof “Galaxy Quest” to sci-fi “it” show “Westworld”: he loves to work.
Well, that and he’s good at this acting thing.
The Toronto-born Colantoni is surely one of Canada’s most recognizable actors: his long list of credits on both sides of the border includes Canadian shows, like “Flashpoint” and “Bad Blood,” and many American ones, like “Person of Interest,” “Station Eleven” and  “Just Shoot Me!”
“It’s hard for me to say no to anything,” said Colantoni over a juice at a Kensington Market coffee shop. “It’s like, if I’ve got the time I’ll do your independent film. My agent’s gonna kill me for saying that, but it’s true.
“If there’s a secret to the success, it’s not about anything other than I want to play right now. I want to play.”
And play he did while making “English Teacher,” an FX comedy that debuts in the U.S. on Labour Day and in Canada on Disney Plus later this month.
The series was created by American actor Brian Jordan Alvarez, known for “Will & Grace” and “Jane the Virgin” as well as his own web series and YouTube videos. He stars as a gay high school English teacher in Austin, Texas, navigating cancel culture, homophobia, demanding parents, quirky co-workers and entitled teenagers, but in a wryly comic way.
Colantoni plays conflict-avoidant principal Grant Moretti, who’s often caught between a rock and a hard place while trying to keep the peace.
“I wanted to be a part of a show that had the same fun that ‘Just Shoot Me!’ did,” said Colantoni, referencing the hit  sitcom in which he co-starred with David Spade. “And it’s been too long (waiting) to be part of a comedy where you can’t not have fun. If you bring any other attitude, you’re in the wrong business.”
Still, Colantoni was shocked by how quickly he got the “English Teacher” job, considering that some of his best known credits — including the teen crime drama “Veronica Mars,” in which he played the titular sleuth’s dad — are a couple of decades behind him. 
He sent an audition video and, just days later, “my agent was calling me, saying, ‘OK, they want to make a deal.’”
Colantoni asked the producers — who besides Alvarez include Jonathan Krisel (“Portlandia”) and Paul Simms (“NewsRadio” and “What We Do in the Shadows”) — how he beat the competition.
They said, “When you did this thing with your hands and everybody else was just like a principal, but you were like …” And he put his hands over his face, as if in exasperation and resignation.
“My principal is just being me at this stage in my life, like, ‘Oh boy, another audition,’” joked Colantoni.
Like many TV and movie actors, the 61-year-old Colantoni got his start in theatre, but it was TV that lit the spark when he was  around seven, growing up in Toronto, the son of Italian immigrants.
For a couple of hours every weekday when he got home from school — his father had already left for his job as a night custodian at Toronto City Hall, his mother had yet to return from hers sewing buttons in a sweatshop — young Enrico turned to the television for company.
“It was me watching ‘The Hilarious House of Frightenstein’ and seeing Billy Van doing all these impersonations, and me taking those impersonations and going outside on my balcony and just living in my head.”
He started doing skits in school, but it wasn’t until he took a theatre course at what was then the University of Toronto’s Erindale College, where he was studying psychology and sociology, that he began to consider acting as a possible career, encouraged first by a teacher and then a fellow student. 
The latter suggested that Colantoni move to New York, so he did, quitting U of T to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the oldest acting school in the English-speaking world.
After that, he spent five years doing what he called “makeshift theatre” in New York but not getting anywhere, “when it occurred to me that the dude carrying a spear at the Public (Theater), in the background playing Blendineo, as I would call him, he went to Yale or Juilliard or NYU — I need to go to one of those schools.”
So he spent another three years at the prestigious Yale School of Drama, where he won the school’s Carol Dye Award for his talent as a performer.
“They taught me how to have fun and not take (acting) so Methody,” Colantoni said. “And that’s when work started to come.”
He ended up doing plays at acclaimed theatres like the Guthrie and, yes, the Public, “playing Blendineo, the spear carrier — I fished a wish — and then it was an episode of ‘NYPD Blue,’” which brought him to Los Angeles in 1994.
Soon he had a role as a series regular on the sitcom “Hope & Gloria.”
“Life in L.A., wow, that was a trip,” said Colantoni. “You start making money and you’re on TV, and you think the world’s your oyster. And then it’s like, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I’m just a working class guy like my dad.’ Which made it OK (that) there wasn’t a huge trajectory up. It’s sort of been easy-peasy.”
So no, Colantoni doesn’t call himself as a star, despite a list of credits as long as your leg, never mind your arm. 
“Before it all started, all I said was I want to be a working actor, that’s all,” he said.
And working he is: steadily.
Besides “English Teacher,” which he shot earlier this year in Atlanta, Colantoni was recently seen in the CBC police procedural “Allegiance,” as the training officer to a rookie portrayed by Supinder Wraich of “Sort Of.” He also played a blue collar worker in this year’s Crave sitcom “The Trades”; co-starred in a couple of Canadian horror movies, “Mother Father Sister Brother Frank” and “Humane”; and has spent the summer in Toronto filming episodes for the second season of “FUBAR,” the Netflix comedy that stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a CIA operative.
A big part of the attraction of such jobs is the people he gets to work with.
“I think anything that’s made is a miracle,” said Colantoni. “Nobody knows what is going to be successful. You know, everybody pooh-poohed shows like ‘Just Shoot Me!’ and ‘Veronica Mars.’ They were the dark horses during those pilot seasons.
“It really is who you get to play with … Like, going back to ‘Allegiance,’ it’s all about Mark and Stephanie” — showrunners Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morgenstern, who also created “Flashpoint.” “Knowing their spirit, knowing how they write so from the heart, it was like a no-brainer.”
Colantoni also praised co-stars Wraich (“the most effervescent human being”) and Schwarzenegger (“just a positive, affirmative guy who just loves being there and does not bring attitude with him at all”). He compared “English Teacher” co-stars Alvarez and Stephanie Koenig to the famous comedy team Burns and Allen.
Working with them and standups Sean Patton and Carmen Christopher on “English Teacher” is like being a classically trained musician learning to play jazz, he added, and “it’s magic to be a part of.”
“You gotta fall in love with everybody at work and just want to play with them,” Colantoni said. 
“I don’t want to stop until I drop dead. That’s the plan.”