Television: Luke aloft -- with a hit film and a hot series, this actor is soaring.

This article profiles Canadian film and television actor, Luke Kirby. Kirby has his nose in his teacup at a Toronto caf&eacute. And Kirby would know: while in high school, he worked as a dishwasher at a fancy restaurant in Guelph, Ont. He's the star of the hit movie "Mambo Italiano," and is part of the ensemble cast of "Slings and Arrows," a wickedly smart and funny miniseries about a Shakespearean theatre festival that also features Paul Gross, Mark McKinney, Sean Cullen and Don McKellar (it premieres on The Movie Network and Movie Central on Nov. 3). In "Slings and Arrows," Kirby is Jack Crew, an action-movie star in the U.S. (think Keanu Reeves) who comes to small-town Ontario to play Hamlet at the New Burbage Festival (think Stratford). Then there's that distinctly Canadian movie he stars in about a Montreal immigrant family coming to terms with their son's homosexuality.