Cast Bios
Joel Thomas Hynes as Keith Kavanagh
Joel Thomas Hynes is from Calvert, Newfoundland and has won various awards for writing in different media. His novels Down to the Dirt (2005) and Right Away Monday (2007) have been published to widespread national and international acclaim by Harper Collins Canada.
Hynes co-wrote the celebrated stageplay The Devil You Don’t Know and his most recent play Say Nothing Saw Wood, which was produced by the RCA Theatre Co in 2007, won the NL Arts and Letters Award for Best Dramatic Script.
Also an actor, Hynes has performed numerous leading roles for stage, film and television. He was a contributing writer and played a leading role in the CBC’s Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, and in 2007 performed in The Movie Network’s Re-Genesis, Newfound Film’s Ashore and Heartless Disappearance Into Labrador Seas and played the lead role in the feature film adaptation of his novel Down to the Dirt.
This past spring Hynes was presented with the Lawrence Jackson Creative Writing Award and was also named the Newfoundland and Labrador Art’s Council’s Artist of the Year.
Hynes is now working on an original screenplay, a collection of personal essays, and a children’s book about the slippery nature of addiction.
Mylène Savoie as Natasha Healy
Mylène was born in New Brunswick. She has explored her artistic creativity since she was three - always seeking a way to perform somewhere, whether it was in dance or theatre, music and most recently – television and film acting.
She moved to Montreal in 1999 to study professional dance at Les Ateliers de Danse de Montréal. Upon graduating, she turned to theatre and found a love for improv. She was soon cast in various roles in television series. Some included a nurse in Canada en Amour, a perky waitress on 450 chemin du Golf and a seductive, naïve and dangerous Hilary in The Saboteurs.
Recently she has taken professional workshops with Danielle Fichaud, Jean-Pierre Bergeron and Warren Robertson from the Actor’s Studio. Her work is qualified as fresh and surprising. All of her physical studies in movement and dance show in her work.
Most recently, Mylène stars in the leading role of Natasha in the independent feature film Down to the Dirt.
Robert Joy as Robert Kavanagh
After attending Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, Joy returned to St. John’s Newfoundland and joined the comedy group CODCO. Although he moved to New York three years later when he was cast as Peter in The Diary of Anne Frank, Joy remained involved with the planning of and performing in the Codco feature film The Adventures of Faustus Bidgood.
In 1980, Joy made a sensational film debut in Louis Malle’s Atlantic City opposite Susan Sarandon. He then alternated between work on the New York stage, and roles in other films such as Ragtime, and Ticket to Heaven. Subsequent film roles include Madonna’s boyfriend in Desperately Seeking Susan, Harriet’s dad in Harriet the Spy, Denzel Washington’s antagonist in Fallen and the troubled father in The Divine Ryans (with Pete Postlethwaite). In most recent years, Joy was one of the leads in George Romero’s Land of the Dead. He was one of the leads in the HBO comedy series The High Life and the ABC series MDs. He has guest starred on many shows including Alias, Without a Trace, The Agency, Gideon’s Crossing, Star Trek: Voyager and Law & Order.
Joy is presently a series regular on CBS’s CSI: NY playing the role of Dr. Sid Hammerback.
Hugh Dillon as Renny
Dillon was nominated for a 2007 Genie Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his role as Sonny in Canadian box office hit The Trailer Park Boys: The Movie. He received critical acclaim when he starred opposite Vera Farmiga (The Departed) in the Sundance Film Festival award winning movie, Down To The Bone. “Dillon’s performance as a man who only seems to have it together is marvelous in every detail” – Variety Magazine.
Dillon’s repertoire of notable roles in feature films includes Lone Hero also starring Robert Forster and Sean Patrick Flannery, 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13 with Ethan Hawke and the cult classic Ginger Snaps: The Prequel as well as television guest-starring appearances on The 11th Hour, Regeneris, Degrassi: The Next Generation to name a few.
Dillon played Mike Sweeney in The Movie Network / Movie Central’s highly anticipated new series, Durham County. Durham County follows the tormented life of Detective Mike Sweeney, a world-weary homicide detective and his wife Audrey (Hélène Joy, ReGenesis) and daughters Sadie (Laurence Leboeuf, Human Trafficking) and Maddie (Cecily Austin).
Hugh Dillon’s ability to capture honest, realistic portrayals of complicated characters has been his calling card. Born May 31, 1963 in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, Hugh Rush Dillon landed his first big screen part in the notorious director Bruce McDonald’s Dance Me Outside (1994). Next came his critically acclaimed lead performance as Joe Dick in McDonald’s 1996 feature film, Hard Core Logo. “Hard Core Logo is an often hilarious, surprisingly poignant chronicle of the seamier side of life… Dillon is full of raging energy as Joe Dick” – Variety Magazine. The film and in particular Dillon’s performance caught the eye of legendary filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and his company, Rolling Thunder Pictures who distributed the movie and brought international attention to the revered indie classic and its lead actor.
This July, Dillon can be seen in the role of team leader/lead sniper, Ed Lane in the TV series, Flashpoint.
Combining acting with a commendable career as a singer songwriter, Dillon first earned notoriety in Canada and abroad as the lead singer in the multi-platinum rock and roll band, The Headstones. Signed to Universal Music in the early nineties, the band released six albums. After the Headstones he formed the Hugh Dillon Redemption Choir and released The High Cost Of Low Living. Transcending the rock world, Dillon has consistently scored and written compositions for numerous movie and television productions including Durham County. Hugh Dillon currently resides in Los Angeles and Toronto.