Hrant Alianak

Hrant Alianak (born 1950 ), also billed as Harant Alianak or Grant Aljanak, is a Sudanese-Armenian-Canadian actor and playwright. He gained notoriety as Dr. Jon Mendez in Pontypool.

Early life
Alianak was born in Khartoum, Sudan to an Armenian family. At age fifteen, he enrolled in a university in Khartoum, where he studied economics. He moved to Canada when he was 17, and moved to Montreal, Quebec, where he studied business administration. Alianak said he started to write in 1972, and spent most of the 1970s writing plays "nonstop" before entering acting in the 1980s.

Career
In 1988, he was nominated for the Genie Award "Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role" for the 1987 film Family Viewing. He played Pete in the 1995 Adam Sandler movie Billy Madison. He portrayed Dr. Mendez in the 2009 Canadian horror film Pontypool. He also played Dr. Marek in "Stay Out of the Basement", a 1996 episode of the TV series Goosebumps.

Alianak's plays include Lucky Strike, The Walls of Africa, and The Blues. Alianak made his debut as a writer in 1972 at Theatre Passe Muraille, with Tantrums.

The Walls of Africa was the 2001 winner of three Dora Awards, including Best New Play, and was published by Scirocco Drama in 2002. Scirocco has also published The Blues (2003).

In 2010, Alianak portrayed Principal Hicks in the movie My Babysitter's a Vampire. In 2011, he reprised the role in the TV series based on the movie. His other television credits include being a member of the repertory cast of the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2002).