Colm Feore has this to say to people who don't think he can play Pierre Elliott Trudeau: "Just don't watch me."Feore knows that in tackling Trudeau he's taking on the impossible. Love him or hate him, Trudeau galvanized this country.

"You feel a great responsibility," says Feore, an acclaimed film and stage actor who has played everything from Romeo to Cyrano to Hamlet at the Stratford Festival (he returns this summer as Henry Higgins to kick off the Festival's 50th anniversary). "People come up to me on the street and say, 'Don't f*** this up. I didn't like him, never voted for him, hell of a Canadian. Glad he was ours.' "

'TERRIBLE TEASE'

All of those diverse emotions came flooding back from all parts of the country when the former prime minister died at the age of 80 in October 2000.

In the wake of that intensity, Feore was set for a bigger fall than Will Smith as Muhammad Ali. Feore bobbed and weaved when Trudeau was first suggested.

"It was a terrible tease," says the 43-year-old actor.

When the firm offer came in from writer/producer Wayne Grigsby, he knew Trudeau was a challenge he couldn't miss. Feore went on an audio and video tape binge.

"I sucked everything up I could, all of his speeches, every book that was written on him," he says. "My wife finally told me, 'You're going to have to get another room for all this crap.' "

By the time the cameras started rolling in Ottawa and later Halifax, Feore was ready. Although much taller, his strong face and focused gaze bears a marked resemblance to the former PM.

"You are going to freak -- he is Trudeau," said co-star Polly Shannon, who plays Margaret, the young bride who stepped into the eye of the storm.

Feore also seems to share Trudeau's energy. He speaks loud and fast, snatching at questions with the force of a tennis match.

"He was a superlative actor," says Feore. "That is not for a moment to suggest that he was insincere. He knew the message he was going to get across and he knew the medium he was going to use to get it across."

The millionaire Montreal bachelor rocked the grey suits in Ottawa when he ran for the Liberal leadership in 1968.

"Women were swooning, falling down," says Feore. "I can't tell you the number of people who tell me they slept with him or know somebody who did. The guy knew a good time when he saw it."

Yet "the guy was 50 years old," says Feore, who makes the comparison to Mel Gibson, who is 46.

"He looks sexy, he looks great. But you go, 'Mel, you're hanging in there. You lying about your age?' Trudeau was at least five years older than that when he started."

IMITATION

Feore says he didn't try to imitate Trudeau, but there are precise echoes of his peculiar cadence and rhythms, even in his more quiet, pensive moments.

"All I could hope for was that people will buy it when we got into his skin for that one second," he says.

Although he had plenty of reference points Feore never met the former prime minister.

"I'm really glad I didn't," he says. "I wouldn't want any other truth to be interfering with the complete fiction we're offering you as entertainment.

"Finally," he adds, "between 'action' and `cut,' there's hardly time to do much more than get the clothes on, get the hair piece glued in, stand under the light and do what you're told."

All of the preparation, planning and energy came crashing back to earth on Sept. 11. The Trudeau production team was in place in Ottawa for their second day of shooting when news of the attacks started to spread among the crew.

"I hadn't seen the news and was pretending to be the prime minister in the basement of the Parliament Buildings," says Feore. "Naturally, it changed everything.

"That morning we were doing a remarkable piece of art. By lunch time we were just doing a TV show."


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