Paul Christie

Biography

Paul was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. He spent his summers growing up at his family cottage in Northern Ontario. In high school, he was attracted to athletics of all kinds. His love of sport drew him to take up downhill ski racing, a seemingly odd choice given his hometown. His passion for skiing saw him training and competing around North America throughout his teens. At the peak of his skiing career he was spending 120+ days a year training and competing away from home on the FIS and NorAm race circuits. All the while he was able to graduate from high school with honors distinction. At the time, he was a candidate for the Junior National Ski Team when a career ending knee injury forced him to change his course. So, Paul switched gears and headed off to University in the fall of 1999. He studied finance and marketing at the University of Calgary. While working towards his Commerce Degree Paul lightened his serious class load in statistics, economics and accounting by filling his electives with drama and film related classes. In his spare time, Paul went on to volunteer with local filmmaking collectives, played parts in University Theatre and volunteered on independent film sets. He also took a hiatus from business school in order to do an Internship with one of Western Canada's foremost production companies. He completed the Canadian Film and Television Production Association Production Management program under the guidance of veteran producers, Tom Cox, Doug MacLeod and Jordy Randall at Alberta Filmworks. The company is behind such notable programming as "North of 60", "Tom Stone", "Heartland" and "Brokeback Mountain". All the while, Paul harbored a secret ambition to work in front of the camera. He got his first break when he worked as Owen Wilson's stand-in on "High Noon" starring Jackie Chan. After having the experience of working on a major motion picture, Paul's interest in the film and television industry really took hold. That same year Paul went on to work in a variety of regional and national commercials and landed his first Guest Starring role in the Canadian Series "Myth Quest". Knowing that he had more to learn about the craft of acting Paul used the money from the show to move to New York in the summer of 2001. He studied Meisner at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan. After a life changing experience in New York, Paul returned to Business School determined to have a career in the film industry. He graduated with Honours in the spring of 2002 and returned to his hometown of Winnipeg, after having won a $25,000 prize at the Banff International Television Festival to produce and direct his first short film titled "Eugene". Paul delivered the film to Corus Entertainment in 2003 and it went to air on the Scream Network and Movieola in Canada. A trip to Ottawa and a visit to Parliament Hill in 2004 saw Paul participate as a speaker at the Prime Time Forum for the Canadian Film and Television Production Association. He was selected amongst his peers to represent the 'next generation' of Producers in Canada and spoke about the challenges inherent in developing a successful career as a producer. He spent the afternoon having lunch with notable Canadian Producer Ivan Reitman as well as the Chief Executives of Canada's Broadcast Networks. While in Ottawa, Paul was presented with an opportunity to work as an Associate Producer on the then new Canadian series titled "Corner Gas" in Regina. Faced with a difficult decision, Paul instead decided to take a job with a production company in his hometown of Winnipeg called Frantic Films. He worked under the guidance of veteran producer Jamie Brown as a business affairs analyst, line producer and production manager for the company. His producing responsibilities saw him overseeing 13 episodes of a prime time series for Global Television that shot on location in the Caribbean. The series starred Entertainment Tonight personality Cheryl Hickey. While he enjoyed the challenges of producing the desire to work in front of the camera never seemed to go away. So at 26, Paul left Winnipeg and his lucrative career as a producer to move to the coast. Paul tried to avoid the cliché of working as a waiter in order to supplement his acting income while slugging it out in Vancouver. He was able to put his business training to work under the guidance of a senior stock broker at one of Canada's foremost investment firms. He negotiated a half time position that allowed him the flexibility he needed to do his auditions. It wasn't long before the firm asked him to come on board as a full time broker and work for himself. As luck would have it, the week that he was set to decide about joining the firm full time Paul learned that he was cast in "The Wild Roses" for the CBC. It was a difficult decision to make but Paul decided to stay true to the goal that he set out for himself many years before. Today, Paul divides his time between developing projects as a writer/producer and acting in film and television. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Sara McIntyre - Publicist