Andrew Moodie assumed the hosting duties for BIG IDEAS on January 7, 2006. You may recognize him as one of the three jurors who helped us to come up with the 10 finalists in 2005's Best Lecturer Competition, or you may know him as a gifted actor and playwright.

Actor, director, writer Andrew Moodie has spent the past fifteen years in the Canadian entertainment industry performing in many of this country's most distinguished theaters: the Stratford Festival, Second City, Soulpepper, Theatre Passe Muraille, the Factory Theatre, and the Canadian Stage Company. He garnered a Dora nomination for Best Male Performance for his rendition of Othello for Shakespeare in the Rough and he won a Dora award for his performance in Health Class.

His television and film appearances include playing Dr. Hyde in Side Effects for CBC, and Rachel Crawford's evil boyfriend in Clement Virgo's feature film, Rude.

His first play, Riot, was performed at the legendary Factory Theatre, where it received an extended run and won the prestigious Chalmers award for Best New Play. The play has since been placed on the curriculum of many Canadian university English departments. He has since written many other plays including A Common Man's Guide to Loving Women, The Lady Smith, and recently, The Real McCoy -- about the life of black Canadian inventor Elijah McCoy, a production he also directed.

His production credits include: Michael Miller's The Power of Harriet T! for Manitoba Theatre for Young People; For Coloured Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf for the Coloured Girls Collective; and The Real McCoy for Factory Theatre.

He is currently writing The Language of the Heart, a play about Harlem renaissance writer Wallace Thurman.

"His work is the most unabashedly, exuberantly Canadian I've seen since the 1970s."
Rick Salutin - The Globe and Mail

"Moodie's work triumphantly becomes a useful metaphor for what it means to be a Canadian in the 90s."
Geoff Chapman - Toronto Star