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ELLE celebrity: Sarah Polley
Actor/writer/director/activist Sarah Polley shares her thoughts on working in the 'biz.
By Adam Nayman
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Polley at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival Canadian Press Conference
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Predicting which titles will be hits at a major film festival is tough business (last year, Elizabethtown limped into Toronto with more hype than Brokeback Mountain -- go figure). But this fall, the buzz should be fairly earsplitting for Away From Her, an adaptation of a short story by Alice Munro that marks the feature directorial debut of Sarah Polley.
Interviewed in her native Toronto a week before the film's completion, the 27-year-old actress downplays the celebrity-director angle. Polley may be familiar to millions from her childhood work as Sara Stanley on Road to Avonlea, but visibility doesn't necessarily translate to bankability -- especially on the other side of the camera. "If anyone thought it was going to be easy for me to get money for a film," she sighs, "it sure didn't feel that way. It didn't feel like I was being given any leg up."
Hard knocks for celebrity directors too!
"I spent three or four years trying to get another film green-lit," she explains. "It didn't work. And then this one did, which is fantastic. But it's tough. I'm glad that it was hard for me, because I think that it makes you a better filmmaker to have to fight for what you're doing. I'm glad I got that experience, but it's a hard thing, and I think it's harder now than it was 10 years ago. I hope it doesn't get harder, but I think it will."
Not that Polley is about to retreat. She says that making Away From Her was a milestone in her young career that she describes as the "most thrilling, nightmarish, fantastic experience" she's ever had. "Even though I've always really enjoyed acting, it was never something I set out to do for myself. As much as I loved it -- I think it's the luckiest, most privileged job in the world -- this has a different meaning for me."
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Photo courtesy of wireimage.com
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