Quarantining with Kevin Durand

MONTREAL - We recently caught up with actor Kevin Durand, who is quarantining with his family in Southern California.

The 46-year-old Thunder Bay, ON native - and fervent Canadiens supporter - has gladly traded reading scripts and acting opposite some of Hollywood's biggest stars for being a full-time "girl dad" and discovering his teaching chops as well.

Here's a look at what's been happening in Durand's world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What projects - professional or personal - have been put "on pause" for you with everything going on?

Everything's been put on hold. Everything just stopped. I was supposed to have a movie that was going to start shooting up in Canada, but who knows when that's going to come back. Nobody knows. Even the projects I've been developing have been put on hold. A lot of people have a lot of time at home to do a lot of things right now. People are picking up musical instruments and reading books and all that, but I have these beautiful kids that are home. My wife, Sandra, and I, we're teaching all day. We're teaching them, playing with them, and having the best time ever. By the end of the day, though, we're so fried that my brain doesn't want to write or create anymore. I'm grateful for the time. I've just been hanging with my wife and my baby girls. Amélie Moon is creeping up on five years old now, and Winter Fox is 11 months. It's been awesome. Those two are keeping us busy and happy.

What's a typical day like for you?

I'm just up with my youngest daughter, and then we go wake up my other daughter, and we just eat and hang out. I do schooling for my Amélie until about 12:30 p.m., and then we put the baby the bed. After that, my wife and I will work out. We built a gym here, and we both train while Amélie does some work on the computer. She does some ABCmouse kind of stuff. But we train about six days a week. We're always going at it, just trying to stay fit. It's just more of that in the afternoon, and then sinking into the couch at night trying to recuperate and kick our feet up for a couple of hours before sleeping and starting all over again.

Have you picked up any new hobbies? Are you learning any new skills?

There's just no time with the kids. I've been having lots of fun teaching. We've been going on kind of like nature walks around here and identifying wildlife and plants, which is pretty cool. We have a lot of lizards and snakes here, and a lot of really cool and interesting spiders. It's good to learn about them and identify them. Since hockey's on pause, the only hockey I get every day is just when I train. I always, always, always, like clockwork, turn on NHL Network. I turn the volume down because the baby's next door, though. I find it just makes me happy and calms me. They have all those classic games playing now, which is really, really fun to watch. It's cool to see how the game has changed. The athleticism now is just crazy.

Have you reached the "Baking your own bread" or "Giving yourself/your significant other a haircut" stage of quarantine yet?

First off, I haven't paid for a haircut in a really long time. It's been over a decade, because I either do it myself or my wife does it. I was quarantine ready. That hasn't really affected us. I think teaching the kids has been the biggest change. It's a really wonderful thing. They start preschool so early here that it's nice to have Amélie home and to teach and learn at the same time. It's excellent. I'm making the most of it because like hockey players, when I work, I seldomly have home games. Everything I shoot always shoots out of state, which is a real bummer because I always have to pick up and leave and spend a lot of time on FaceTime and phone calls. That's tough.

You're a big sports fan. What have you been doing to fill the sports void with everything on break?

I like participating, so I'm on my spin bike all the time. I compete quite frequently on Peloton. I just like to keep active. That's the old athlete in me. I can't let it go. I have to be careful on Peloton because I have a very hard time letting other people beat me, which is very dangerous because you have professional riders on there. Sometimes I have to take a break from it and chill out. It's cool to see all the hockey players on Peloton during the quarantine. It's really fantastic. I also finished the first draft of my hockey movie, finally. I've been writing that for about seven years on and off. The dream is that it'll be the quintessential hockey movie, like a true kind of gritty story. We'll see if I achieve it. I'll keep hustling.

Can you give us some quarantine recommendations? What are you reading, streaming, and playing these days?

I'm kind of perpetually reading the "Jack Reacher" books. There's 24 or 25 of them now. I went back to the start again. I always read them before I go to bed. Part of it is because I constantly get letters from people saying that I should be Jack Reacher. I actually just auditioned for it on tape from home for the series for Amazon. But whether I get the part of not, I really love the books so I'm always reading them. As far as what we've been watching at night, we absolutely love "Schitt's Creek." It's our new favorite show. We found it kind of late, but we went through all six seasons quite quickly. We would watch two to three episodes every night. I'm just so proud of the show coming out of Canada. It definitely resonated all across North America and abroad, too. It really caught fire. We also started watching "The Morning Show" on Apple TV. It's so damn good. Those are two of our favorites. And then we're also going through old movies. One of my favorites is "Apocalypse Now Redux." I'm also going through "The Godfather" series. I love anything by Martin Scorsese.

Are there any particular things you do in order to maintain a positive mindset through the current circumstances?

I don't think I've really changed the way I approach life. I always try to stay as fit as I can. I've got to sweat once a day. I've got to keep up with my meditations to keep me in the moment. When you have all this time on your hands, our greatest enemy is the wandering mind. The greatest form of currency in our day and age is attention span. I just find with meditation, training, and eating healthy, it just keeps me in a positive state. If I'm in the moment, I can just appreciate everything around me. If I wasn't living in the moment, I might think about all the things that are bugging me and the things that I don't have yet. I'd rather focus on what's happening right here, right now.

What are you looking forward to doing the most once things get back to quasi-normal?

I'm really excited to start my own movies. That has been a dream for a really long time. I'm really excited to start pushing the envelope on that and just having control of the when, where, who, and how. When everything opens up again, we can start moving forward with that. But quite honestly, this whole social distancing thing, for my wife and I, it's not really hard on us because we're always kind of socially distancing. We kind of live in our own little world. When I'm not shooting abroad somewhere, I don't want to leave home. It's good to take your time and hang out with the people that you love. You have to show them how much they mean to you because when the world starts up again, it's hard not to get caught up in the mechanisms of society. So it's nice for all of us to take a breath.

What's been the biggest silver lining that you've seen in all of this?

The biggest silver lining is people just really having an opportunity to kind of take a good look at themselves, take some deep breaths, and spend time with their family. I was also reading this article where this doctor was saying that hopefully people take away an understanding that whether it's the coronavirus or the standard flu or anything, there are always germs around, and if people can become more aware of washing their hands, we might be able to get a handle on other viruses that have been running rampant for decades. If people keep practicing good hygiene, we may end up better off than we were before.