Polley on my mind

Amazing to photograph I'd imagine

Trolling through my DVD collection the other day, I realised I was torn between watching Dawn of the Dead and Go. Initially I just couldn't work out why i was attracted to both these films at the same time - later I realised that subconsciously I must have been thinking about Sarah Polley, who just happens to appear in both films.

I've always had a thing for female character actors. Obviously my love of all things Mary Stuart Masterson aside - I would like to point out I am not entirely myopic when it comes to female actors. I also like Christina Ricci - so there!

A good bio for Sarah can be found here. I'll steal some more interesting quotes from this source.

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 dialog 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....

She has said that her choice of film roles, eschewing mainstream Hollywood movies for chancier, non-commercial independent fare, was the result of an ethical decision on her part to make films with social importance....

Polley is as renowned for her intelligence as for her remarkable talent. The problem of the intelligent person in the acting field is that the actor, as artist, in not ultimately in control of their medium, and it is artistic control that is the hallmark of the great artist. The controlling intelligence on a movie set is the director, and her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre has given her a new perspective on acting. The actor, she says, should not try to give a complete performance for the camera (that is, control the representation on film) but must remember that the function of the actor is to give the director as much coverage as possible as a film, as well as a performance, is made in the editing room.

Find her at your local DVD rental store - she's a gem.