Sarah Polley

Sarah Polley biography

Sarah Polley is an actress and director renowned in her native Canada for her political activism. Blessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialogue due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character's thoughts, Polley has become a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films.

Trivia

The youngest of five children. Both parents were actors and she had her first audition at age 5. She debuted in films at age 6 with "One Magic Christmas"

Quote

"It is important to me to stay in Canada. I used to think it was because I thought it was important to build up an indigenous film industry - but now I realise I'm incapable of living anywhere else. I'm a real homebody."

"I was pretty uninterested in acting until I was about 17. I wanted to got to university and never think baout acting again. I'd been very politically involved for a couple of years and I wanted a break, so I did The Sweet Hereafter in 1997. But I ended up completely falling in love with acting."

"I always think it's a bit of a joke when I get described as an activist. Really, for two or three months of my year I organise stuff, but I'm not as involved as I used to be."

"I started acting when I was four. My first experience on a film set was in dead of winter. Now I realise that almost every film I've ever been in is like that. It was the beginning of a long career of incredibly cold, sparse, barren landscapes."

"The guy who taught me to use the shotgun was a complete gun nut. I asked, 'Is the safety on when it's to the right or off when it's to the right?' And he said, 'The way I like to remember it is right is safe, like the government, and left is unsafe, like the people we are shooting at.' And I'm thinking, 'I'm in a room with my worst nightmare who's teaching me how to shoot a shotgun. How did this happen to me?'"
"I missed out on a traditional childhood but I had something else that got me to what I am doing today. I can't say I regret it but I certainly wouldn't let my child act at an early age."
On her film "Dawn of the Dead" (2004) going up against Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" head-to-head at the box office: "They've got only one guy who comes back from the dead. We've got millions."