CLARK JOHNSON APPEARS unaware of the effect he’s having on most everyone else in the room. We’re in between takes, and the 30 or so crew members on the set of Cra$h and Burn are rearranging the set, tinkering with panels and dials, fixing collars and all the while flashing furtive glances at the famous gent presently arriving at the punchline of a joke with cast members who’ve pulled their chairs in close.

Finally, we’re ready to roll. Johnson rises from his cubicle and takes his mark amid the potted plants, water cooler and filing cabinets that decorate this Mississauga office. At Action! a brunette in a pencil skirt swishes past, eyes fixed on an armful of documents. Johnson and his co-star drop into dialogue. Halfway through, however, something’s amiss. The director, dissatisfied, yanks off his headphones. Cut!

This, the business of filming a TV show, can be a long and laborious process where one 30-second scene can consume hours and multiple takes. Efficiency is therefore the law of the land. But where cast and crew are nervously fussing over the next take, Johnson is drumming vigorously on the top of a filing cabinet. Clearly, the sudden stop-and-go of the set is nothing new to Johnson.

“I touched my tie, and there’s a mic in there,” he explains a few moments later. “The camera could be just off, a cable could be hanging.You know, little stuff can make you go again.”

He would certainly know. Over his decades in the business, Johnson has directed big-budget shows and movies and some of Hollywood’s biggest stars — Colin Farrell and Samuel L. Jackson, in 2003’s S.W.A.T., and Michael Douglas, Kiefer Sutherland and Eva Longoria in 2006’s The Sentinel.

Before that, he was on the long-running series Homicide: Life on the Street as Det. Meldrick Lewis. But Johnson is perhaps best known for his work on HBO’s The Wire, a gutsy cop drama that earned critical acclaim for its honest portrayal of the trenchant social ills facing American urban society today, from the drug trade and smuggling, crooked politics, a crumbling education system and a news media dangerously reliant on advertising dollars.

Johnson directed the first three episodes as well as the series finale and, in season five, played wise and weary newspaper editor Augustus “Gus” Haynes, which made him a vital part of what Slate editor Jacob Weisberg called “the best TV show ever broadcast in America.”

High praise, but not a far cry from how Johnson feels about the show himself. “That’s one of the things I’m most proud of, that show,” he says.

Today, Johnson is in front of the camera — no directing this time — as Walker Hearn, a cop turned insurance fraud investigator who plumbs the seedy depths of the insurance game alongside his partner and lead character Jimmy Burn, played by Luke Kirby. The Showcase series, produced by Paul Gross, premieres on Nov. 18 at 9 p.m. on channel 39.

A typical plot might see an insurance company refusing to pay out to “the little old lady whose house burned down because she was wearing [something as inconsequential as] a plaid shirt,” Johnson says.

Hearn and Burn set out to right the various wrongs, a job that’s not unlike those of the TV cops of Johnson’s past. “OK, I’m listening to what you’re saying, but I’m trying to pick up on what you’re thinking. That’s fun,” he says of his character’s mindset.

A series about insurance fraud set in an office may not scream surefire hit, but that’s not how Johnson sees it.“You look at these cubicles out here and how predictable it seems, but in the world of insurance fraud, people are gaming all the time, so it’s more like the cop and robbers stories we’re used to,” he says.

Plus, the two female leads (Toronto’s Caroline Cave and Vancouver’s Leela Savasta) are “profoundly sexy,” he adds.

Johnson grew up on Heath Street and lives nearby today, not far from his siblings, jazz singers Molly and Taborah and social worker Ron (“the only grown-up in the family,” he says). When asked, though, Johnson says he’s “from” Philadelphia, which is where he was born and lived until age six when the family picked up and headed to Canada.

Nevertheless, while Johnson’s various directing and acting gigs take him all across the world — as you’re reading this, he’s in South Africa directing Halle Berry in a shark thriller called Dark Tide — Avenue and Dupont is where Johnson hangs his various hats.

“I call it ‘my place upstate’ because I’ve got two pine trees and a deck in the back, and that place is really mellow.With the hustle and bustle of Manhattan, I come to Toronto and I’ve got my little country retreat.” He takes his work to Caffe Doria, when he needs to get out of the house, and he plays golf with the butchers from Olliffe.

The area wasn’t always quite so posh, Johnson remembers. “It’s really yupped up now, but it was pretty much a middle-class neighbourhood when we got there,” he says.

The Johnson kids were a talented bunch from a young age. Ed Mirvish cast them in his productions along with another talented troupe of child actors, Cynthia, Jennifer and Loretta Dale. “I think they did Gypsy while we were doing Finian’s Rainbow,” says Johnson. “We kind of grew up in the wings of the Royal Alex.”

After university at Concordia and in the States and a stab at pro football, Johnson took a job as a driver on the set of an action movie called The Last Chase, starring Lee Majors. Bit roles and special effects work followed. The work was regular but never high profile.

Finally, in 1985, Johnson scored a regular part on Night Heat from 1985 to 1988. That led to Homicide: Life on the Street from 1993 to 1999.

Eventually, Johnson found himself behind the camera, directing five episodes of Homicide. From there, oneoff directing spots on some of TV’s biggest shows fell into place: The West Wing, NYPD Blue, Third Watch, The Shield.

Then, in the summer of 2001, David Simon, co-writer and co-producer of Homicide, approached Johnson to direct the pilot of a new show he had dreamed up called The Wire. Johnson was an easy choice to direct the show’s pilot.

“Clark is hilarious. He has one of the more refined senses of humour in the business. He is a master of the practical joke, albeit not as much as I am,” says Simon. “He keeps the crew loose. Listen, it’s a hard job. It’s a fun job, but it’s also 12, 14 hours a day, and five days a week.… He knows everyone’s name, he’s into everyone’s shit. He’s making everyone loose and comfortable when by rights no one should want to stay there that long.”

Since getting this scene right on the set of Cra$h and Burn is the only thing keeping cast and crew from their lunch break, the same sentiment could apply today.

At the moment, the director is huddled with Johnson’s co-star, giving instructions on how to tweak things. Little do they know that Johnson has snuck up behind them and is eavesdropping on the private conversation.

When the director finally notices, the crew erupts in laughter and Johnson scurries back to his mark. The master of the practical joke has struck again, and whether anyone realizes it or not, the mood in the room has noticeably relaxed.

The next take, perhaps not coincidentally, is a keeper.

FOR SONJA SMITS, the Canadian icon who we’ve been watching on television for almost three decades (Street Legal, Traders and The Eleventh Hour), starring in the edgy play That Face this month means a return to her roots, and she couldn’t be happier about it.

“I started in theatre, you know. That was my first love. I went to theatre school, and that’s where I first started — onstage,” she says. “What I like most about theatre is the process. I love the rehearsal process. I love the fact that you have a month, in this case, to work almost essentially with the other actors and the director on how you want to do it and playing with that.”

It’s a warm autumn day, and Smits is on the patio at Caffe Doria, looking just as she does onscreen but softer, more feminine and younger. A chunky beaded necklace rests against her neck, and she is sporting sassy spectator pumps that are unexpected and daring.

It’s no wonder she’s being stared at. But Smits lives in the ’hood, so maybe it’s just neighbour curiosity rather than celebrity gawking.

Smits, her husband Seaton McLean, the former head of film production for Alliance Atlantis, and their son and daughter have lived in Rosedale in the same house for the last 17 years or so. That puts her close to her favourite restaurants and shops — here at Doria for coffee, Pastis for casual dinners and seafood at Pisces.

The very picture of domestic bliss, you might say. But in That Face, Smits is far from your typical housewife. The award-winning play, currently on now at the Berkeley Theatre on Berkeley Street, sees Smits playing the pillpopping alcoholic mother of an uppercrust family.

“It’s a fun character,” says Smits. “They’re a very eloquent family, the kids are in private school, they have all of this. From the outside, things probably look pretty good. But it really says to me about what happens when children end up parenting parents.” A bit dark, perhaps, for a woman who’s known for PG-rated CBC drama — but that’s half the fun, she says.

“It was interesting. When I read it for the first time, I thought, ‘This is awful, and then I’d start laughing, and I’d think, ‘Oh my God, I’m laughing. But this is so awful — but I’m laughing.’”

Written by award-winning English playwright Polly Stenham when she was just 19 years old, That Face offers an edgy and real — often uncomfortably so — look at a wealthy family, whose various dysfunctions and vices are laid bare when their daughter is expelled from private school.

When the play’s director, Kelly Thornton, came upon That Face she sent it to Smits immediately. “She said, ‘This part has fangs,’”recalls Thornton. “It’s an amazing, amazing role. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer roles for women. Sonja is shining in it.”

Of Smits’ various roles on stage and on screen, it’s Street Legal we remember best. The one-hour CBC legal drama ran from 1987 to 1994 with repeats running into this year. Smits played Carrington “Carrie” Barr alongside Canadian actors Eric Peterson and C. David Johnson. In its last six seasons, it regularly drew about a million viewers and a devoted following. When the show was airing, says Smits, “people would shout out my character’s name, which was cute.”

So how did a girl from an Ottawa Valley dairy farm end up on a hit television series? Smits came to Toronto to attend theatre school at Ryerson. After two years, she took a summer theatre job in Quebec City where director Ken Livingston invited her to join his new company in London, Ont., Centre Stage.

When CBC casting directors saw the show, they asked her to audition for a CBC movie, Tyler, for the part of a farm girl.

“I arrived for the audition very nicely dressed in a skirt and heels. Most of the other actresses were dressed in pigtails and gingham. When I was called back for the final audition, they pleaded with me to wear something more ‘farm girlish.’ I said, ‘This is how a farm girl would dress for an important meeting, but if you really want, I’ll wear jeans.’ I got the role.”

Since then, Smits has been a regular on stages across the country, including the Tarragon, Toronto Free Theatre and the Canadian Stage Company, starring in The Graduate, George P. Walker’s Nothing Sacred and Judith Thompson’s Perfect Pie.

She interspersed those roles with film and television work: alongside Deborah Harry in David Cronenberg’s 1983 film Videodrome, was in a television biopic about Judy Garland and been in big screen films such as Owning Mahowny, How to Deal and A Different Loyalty, starring Sharon Stone.

Back then, acting was the most important thing to her. Now, she says, she has other interests and waits for the right role to come along.

“I want to do [roles] because I’ll get something out of it, because I think acting is like a precious thing — I don’t want to waste it. I’ll do something else. I’ll read a book,” she says.

She was elected president of the board of directors at Harbourfront this past June (the first professional artist to be named president) after being a member for several years. She supports the Parkdale Women’s Shelter, the Redwood. And then there are her kids and family.

“There’s a lot of just my own life — my kids, my family. There’s a lot of other things that I can do that I’m interested in,” says Smits.

Like starting a vineyard in Prince Edward County, for example.

The country girl moves back to the country? It wasn’t planned that way. “It wasn’t until we’d already bought the land, put some vines in and started worrying about the weather that I realized, ‘Oh, I’ve come full circle.’”

Smits and her husband bought the land about 10 years ago.

But back then, they were among the handful of vineyards in the area. Now they are one of about 50. Wine from their estate wine, Closson Chase, is available through the LCBO Vintages this month.

“When I first started out, people would say,‘It’s Canadian and it’s good?’ So the level has gone up, and the expectation has gone up too. And it’s nice to be a part of that growth, and that’s a cultural thing, too, which I didn’t even think of that. So I’m still in the cultural industry, but now it’s wine.”

And despite having recently bought a farm about eight kilometres away from the vineyard, Smits is not ready to give up city life entirely. Thank goodness. Then who would the neighbours spy on?