Confident, genuine and charming: those three words come up repeatedly when people speak of meeting Potter for the first time. Yet in a 1991 London Magazine interview Potter admits his decision to become a professional actor was not always easy. "I've gambled with my life. I've sweated many-a-night. And I'm not so cocksure," he says.

Once he decided to become a professional actor, he quickly landed a role in the pilot for a Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC) comedy series, Coming and Going, with Louis Del Grande. The series, however, never aired and the "dark period" began. As Potter explained to interviewer Johanne Schuman, "At one point Biloxi had ended, my lead in a pilot (CBC-TV's Coming and Going) was not picked up, and I found myself without a job." This was a "scary" year of classes, of repeated travel to auditions in Toronto and of waiting for the occasional commercial or guest spot. As Loucks recalls, "He'd (Potter) get a call back and then another and another and it'd finally get down to him and another guy. And then the other guy would get it. He'd get four or five callbacks. But he'd always do it. He'd drive all the way over, do the audition and then drive back to London. He's completely professional."