Sarah Polley prefers to remain unknown
By Jeanine Tan, TODAY | Posted: 25 August 2006 1405 hrs

Sarah Polley is an actress who could have been better known to movie
audiences.

That is, she could have played the iconic groupie Penny Lane in
Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, but she pulled out of the project. Kate
Hudson eventually played the role.

And blessed with acting skills that have made her widely known within
the film industry, the 27-year-old Canadian could also have been the
star of similar big-budget studio films and launched a higher-profile
career in Hollywood.

Instead, she has made her preference for indie films clear from the
beginning.

One of her best known roles was in director Atom Egoyan's The Sweet
Hereafter, but audiences here may recognise the fragile-looking blonde
from last year's Dawn of the Dead — one of the rare studio films that
she has done.

To watch her in her indie element, catch her in German director Wim
Wenders' road trip drama Don't Come Knocking, which is showing at The
Picturehouse.

"I think my main criteria for choosing films is: 'Is this a film I
would like to see?'" she told Today in an email interview. "For the
most part, I go to see small independent films, so the majority of the
films I am in are films of that nature.

"However, I do occasionally go see blockbusters. So, sometimes —
though very rarely — I do those, too. It's kind of like exploring the
belly of the beast! I don't want to live there, but it's interesting
to explore that very strange world every now and then."

While Hollywood may seem strange to Polley, Tinseltown might just view
her in the same way. In fact, her career has been marked by incidents
of decidedly un-Hollywood behaviour.

She has been acting since the age of six in Canada, but unlike many
child actors, she didn't grow up into a life of drugs and alcohol.

Instead, by the time she was barely into her teens, Polley had already
become so politically aware that she protested the increasing American
influence in the hugely popular Canadian TV series The Road to Avonlea
— she was the star — by dropping out of the show.

"I had a family who talked about politics avidly at the dinner table.
So, I suppose that helped," she said of her early interest in the
political sphere.

"I think having a political awareness is a big part of being human for
me. To be part of something bigger and engaged in the world around me
fuels me forward both personally and as an artist."

Such inclinations have only developed further in the actress'
adulthood and Polley is now known as much for her political beliefs as
for her work in movies. (Apparently, she had a couple of teeth knocked
out during a mass protest — now that's certainly a more effective way
of gaining notoriety that being caught having sex on tape.) However,
she claimed ignorance of any such status.

"I think because I lead quite a normal life in Toronto, I am, for the
most part, unaware of my reputation or the responsibility to live up
to it," she said. "I think, like everyone else, I just feel a
responsibility to try my hardest to be true to myself."

Polley's latest move is to try her hand at directing her first feature
film Away From Her, which stars iconic British actress Julie Christie
and is about a woman who finds love in her twilight years.

"I suppose because I am at the beginning of a marriage, it was
fascinating to me to explore a story about a marriage that has so much
history," she said.

"What happens to memory and love after you've failed each other and
survived?" - TODAY/sh


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