[67] In June 2013, she received the National Arts Centre Award recognizing achievement over the past performance year at the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, where she was the subject of a short vignette by Ann Marie Fleming entitled Stories Sarah Tells. Western Law 2018 Alumni Magazine, 2018. She sees herself as a part-time extrovert. [58], On October 15, 2017, Polley wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times detailing her experience with Harvey Weinstein and with Hollywood's treatment of women generally, and making a connection between Hollywood's gendered power relations and Polley's not having acted in years. We would always have a good dinner on the table usually with home-baked dessert. [64][65], On October 16, 2010, it was announced that she would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame. Feb. 17, 2022. [4] Polley's second film, Take This Waltz (2011), premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival,[5] followed by her first documentary film, Stories We Tell (2012). George Bernard Shaw wrote: "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." He is hilarious in the process, claiming: "A night with a dead wombat might be more exciting than a night with me after 12 years.". She was competent and beautiful [unusual to dovetail these adjectives]. Now, as she waits for a wider world to discover the sides of herself she reveals in Run Towards the Danger, Polley said that her sharing these stories doesnt necessarily mean she is done with them or that they are done with her, either. She also talked to Michael Polley and her biological father, along with other family and friends affected by the news. In an interview, Polley stated that she takes pride in her work and enjoys both acting and directing, but is not keen on combining the two: I like the feeling of keeping them separate. In 2009, Polley directed a two-minute short film in support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. 19 April 2015. [60], On August 23, 2011, Polley married David Sandomierski, who at the time was working on his SJD degree (equivalent to a PhD in law) at the University of Toronto, which he would complete six years later, in 2017. I think to make it your job to think about your family and to dredge up stuff about your family all day, every day would make anybody totally crazy. I have never seen a city with glossier, better tended roses. At age eight, she was cast as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements involving sexuality, brief strong language and smoking. In the film, Polley breaks up her father's narration with interviews conducted with other members of her family. Even so, Polley said she was beset by self-doubt, constantly questioning what she felt was an irrational need to make the movie. Indiewire called it the finest of Polleys filmmaking skills while New York Magazines David Edelstein referred to Polley as a gifted actress and possibly more gifted writer-director.. Sarah even found and filmed a newspaper cutting reporting on the case. She was in the pilot episode for Friday the 13th The Series, as well as appearing in a small role in William Fruet's sci-fi horror film Blue Monkey, both in 1987. When I saw Away From Her, I thought, Well, this isnt a surprise that someone whos such a great actor would be able to create such amazing performances and have such a rapport with her cast, Egoyan said, referring to Polleys directorial debut, which centered on the deterioration of a couple in the face of Alzheimers and landed actress Julie Christie an Oscar nomination for lead actress. The acclaimed Canadian film-maker talks about the often painful burden of exploring the lives of loved ones and why she thinks marriage is a 'crazy and optimistic' institution, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Sarah Polley: 'Stories are our way of coping, of creating shape out of mess', Sarah Polley: Stories We Tell Photograph: Roadside Attractions/Rex Features, Stories We Tell review Sarah Polleys complex love letter to her parents, Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell: watch the acclaimed documentary here, Sarah Polley: 'We're all kind of ugly in our relationships', Show us your favourite photo of your parents, Stories We Tell: watch the trailer for Sarah Polley's new film - video, Readers' favourite photos of their parents. (Polley divorced her first husband in 2008 and remarried in 2011. She fills me in on an "epic disaster of the mayor who has been accused of smoking crack" (he denies it) but otherwise describes the city as "diverse, tolerant, multicultural". Is there such a thing as emotional copyright? While Polley was recuperating from her concussion, Atwood said she held the rights to her novel Alias Grace a book that Polley first asked her if she could adapt when she was 17 so that she could complete a TV mini-series based on it. Manipulating even as it exposes, Stories We Tell is a provocative, genre-bending documentary that examines how we construct personal narratives and shows Polley struggling with her own. One of the film's most moving sequences records the feelings about this cruelty all these years later. I dont think I ever resolved my self-doubt or my feelings of ambiguity about it. [28] Later that year, she also appeared in a cameo role in Bruce MacDonald's film Trigger. Roadside Attractions With a seamless weaving of home movies real and faux, Polley conjures up her mother as a vivacious party girl. In 2003 she got married, to David Wharnsby, a film editor. Two days after her 11th birthday, Sarah Polley lost her mother to cancer. But Sarah Polley, a professional performer from childhood, blossomed into a fine young actress: in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter , David Cronenberg's eX istenZ , Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight of Water . The revelation sent Polley reeling: If her father was not her father, then who was her mother, and what did that mean about her own identity? "I remember we talked about how you didn't look like Dad," a sister says. As I fly to Canada to meet Sarah Polley, I think about the glimpses of her in Stories We Tell her first full-length documentary feature, which bowled over critics at Sundance and the Venice film festival and has won Canada's Film of the Year award. [9][49] She was subsequently involved with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. I can imagine because I feel a similarly relaxed freedom talking to Sarah. Ten short years later she discovered the secret that her mother had kept hidden all Sarahs life, Michael Polley was not her father. [7] Polley first wrote to Atwood asking to adapt the novel when she was 17. When people say, Are you better?, Im like, Im better than I was before the concussion, she said last month, almost in disbelief at her own words. [8][9], Polley's son John Buchan is also a casting director. And you had a responsibility that most children would not have. Despite the fact that the family had watched Diane battle the cancer that eventually killed her, when she died everyone was shocked. When Sarah was 11 years old, Diane died of cancer. Another friend, Mort Ransen, speaks of her fear of cancer and likens her to a trembling bird. "In December 2009, I made a film to be aired during the Academy Awards that I believed was to promote the Heart and Stroke Foundation. A DNA test confirmed her suspicions that the man she had called dad all her life, Toronto actor Michael Polley, was not her biological father. Polley was in the midst of another film project, an adaptation of Miriam Toewss novel Women Talking that she wrote and directed, when the pandemic forced its temporary suspension. She did so much perhaps it is not such a surprise she died at 53.". Michael Polley, her British-born father an actor who worked for an insurance company at one dramatic point says he will not try to "guess" what Sarah's thoughts are. In its first chapter, Run Towards the Danger offers a melancholy reflection on Polleys teenage struggles with scoliosis, her body horror juxtaposed with several anxious, frustrating months spent playing the lead in a Stratford Festival production of Alice Through the Looking Glass. Her mother died of cancer when Polley was 11; her father sank into a depression and by age 14 the author had left home to move in with an older brothers ex-girlfriend and largely figure out the world for herself. Diane is a socialite, who feels hemmed in by her introverted husband. Polley burst into the public eye in 1990 as Sara Stanley on the popular CBC television series Road to Avonlea. hide caption. Polley discovered as an adult that her biological father was actually Harry Gulkin, with whom her mother had an affair (as chronicled in Polley's film Stories We Tell). [8][9], Her mother was an actress (best known for playing Gloria Beechham in 44 episodes of the Canadian TV series Street Legal) and a casting director. She is nervous (biting her lower lip) and vulnerable (apologising for fluffing the song's last line). Genealogy for Diane Elizabeth Polley (MacMillan) (1936 - 1990) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. [4], While working as a casting director Polley helped discover the comedy group The kids in the hall, and later guest starred on their show. In 1996, she gave a nomination speech for Kormos at the ONDP leadership convention which she later referred to as the "proudest moment in [her] life".[48]. And I remember him saying to make her laugh: 'I never could stand dancing with a woman who cried.'" Digital Spy - Movie News. This is a fantastic moment in the film (no reconstruction involved). He wound up saying that when he married, in 1967, his one hope was that his children would never feel they had to participate in something so absurd. "As a middle-class woman with a career, it is unimaginable to think of a woman having her children taken away because her 'desire for a career overtook her domestic duties'." The film is a thought inspiring , mix of a documentary that examines how we construct personal narratives and shows Polley struggling with her own shocking news. She was an actress and casting director, known for Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983), Encounter (1952) and The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985). The filmmaker realized this was something worthy of more detailed exploration and a documentary was born. Polley's subsequent role as Nicole Burnell in the 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter brought her considerable attention in the United States; she was a favourite at the Sundance Film Festival. She already has a classy track record as a film director. The 82-year-old icon, known for her roles in The Avengers and more recently Game of Thrones, had . As generous as shes been, Im also part of that weird conspiracy against her ability to grow up normally., (Polley responded in an email, I had transformative, beautiful experiences working on Atoms films. She took care of us brilliantly. Sarah then spent five years delving deeply into her family history. That includes her account of the concussion and her recovery, and while that accident was not her inspiration for writing Run Towards the Danger Its a bit messier and more complex than that Polley said the books contents were informed by the paradigm-shifting worldview her treatment yielded and its exhortation to confront sources of pain.