1 Styling by Jill Carr Hair
Truong, May
Sarah Polley
Issue #31
With Away From Her, the actress takes on a new role: director
By Rebecca Flint-Marx
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 11:57am
As an actress, Sarah Polley has never been one to shy away from difficult, unconventional material. Her physically and emotionally scarred bus-accident survivor in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter and covertly dying wife and mother in Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me are just two of the roles that have distinguished Polley’s long career, which began on Canadian TV when she was 6.
Now 28, Polley is making her feature directorial debut with another complex subject. Away From Her, which was adapted from Alice Munro’s short story, The Bear Came Over the Mountain, stars Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent as a couple whose long marriage is gradually torn apart by Alzheimer’s. The sharp-eyed, deeply moving film, which opens in May, belies Polley’s relative inexperience as a director (she had previously directed several shorts) and has enjoyed warm festival reviews. We spoke with Polley in January, a few weeks before her film opened the Sundance Film Festival.
When did you realize that you wanted to adapt Munro’s story?
I read it like five years ago and absolutely loved the story. It wasn’t what I thought I should do for my first film. It was really daunting — [Munro’s], like, my favorite writer. I imagined the film immediately but didn’t really move forward for a while. It kept forming itself and growing in my head until at some point there was a film that I had to make. And there were so many factors that sort of made it inevitable: I had just worked with Julie Christie and couldn’t stop imagining her in that role. And I was getting really close to my grandmother at the time for the first time, and that was a really important relationship in my life. And there’s also the idea of the kind of love that gets presented in the story. I feel like when we deal with people who are older than 60, we sort of desexualize them, or they’re cute or something, and it’s not my experience of people that age. There’s a love to be explored that’s taken place over decades that’s so much more interesting than the first part of it, which any of us are capable of.
I imagine it would have been a bit intimidating to explore that other end of the spectrum, which you haven’t directly experienced yet.
It absolutely was. But I think it’s because it’s a part of love I’ve always been fascinated by, those relationships that have lasted a long time but have not been without their share of complexities and failures and difficulties. So it was daunting, but I wonder sometimes if you should just make films or write things that you don’t have answers to and are trying to explore. And it certainly, for me, had to be that.
Did Munro have any input into the script?
Not at all. I mean, she read it but she stayed out of the process. She’s sort of into living her life and writing.
You’ve been quoted as saying that as a child actor, you grew up wanting to please everybody. So how did you reconcile that need with being a director, which is a job that involves constant conflict?
That was the most difficult part for me. In the end, making films is an impossible task — you’re doing something so ambitious with so many people, always for way less money and time than you need, so conflict is inevitable. I was lucky to have producers who were unbelievably supportive, but inevitably, things come up. You find out really quickly that your only real loyalty can be to the film and not to yourself. Sometimes it’s going to mean you’re not going to have people’s approval, and you have to soldier on. That really toughened me up; there were things that were more important than getting people to like me all the time. Which isn’t to say I had huge conflicts, but I didn’t wake up every morning and say, “Today I have to get everybody to like me.” I woke up in the morning and said to myself, “Today I have to make this film as well as I can.” I sort of feel like I grew up. Most people maybe go through that a little bit younger than I did [laughs], but being a child actor, you grow up with the sense of constantly needing that approval.
You’ve described directing the film as your first real job.
Absolutely. What I consider stressful now is so different than what I considered stressful before. After making a film, I feel like there’s not that much that freaks me out anymore, and I used to be pretty neurotic. Every day that I wake up and I’m not responsible for 60 people’s days, and whether or not it’s productive or worthwhile, is a really easy day.
So if this was your first real job, how would you characterize the work you did before as an actor? Was it something you thought of as a job job?
I don’t know. I’ve always had so much fun. I’m not that tortured an artist as an actor. I guess what stuck with me after directing was the lack of responsibility involved in [acting]. And that’s [been] so fantastic and such a privilege and also kind of frustrating. Now I feel like I can enjoy acting more and that lack of responsibility, which is such a luxury now. There was a part of me when I wasn’t directing where I felt like I kept missing the most interesting part of the process. Like you would come on and rehearse and then get sent away when all the most interesting conversations took place.
Like being sent to your room.
Yeah, it was like your curfew and it’s too early to stay for the dancing. So it was kind of nice to get to stay and play with the big kids.
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Continued from Venus Zine’s spring 2007 issue
Atom Egoyan was an executive producer of Away From Her. What was it like to work with him in that capacity after working with him as your director?
He was great. Throughout the years of me making my shorts as well, he’s been so supportive. Not necessarily involved, but really available, like if I want to talk about things. He’s one of those people who dedicates a lot of time to supporting emerging filmmakers. He’s also been a huge influence on me because acting in his films was something that changed my perception of film and what it could be and the impact it could have. [On Away From Her] he gave me complete space, and yet if I had a moment where I wanted input or wanted somebody with experience to talk about how he got through a certain situation, he was always there.
Did he ever tell you what to do or how to do something?
No. He wouldn’t give any sort of input unless he was asked for it. I wanted him to read every draft of the script and to see every cut. His notes were always very minimal and specific. The one main thing he did was, in the editing room, he wanted us to try something else structurally, and it actually made the film work. That for me was his biggest contribution: he could kind of see what none of us could see at one point. He actually managed to make the film a little more accessible than it was, which is probably not what people would expect him to do. (laughs)
What kinds of reactions have you gotten to the film?
It’s funny, because I think that when people hear the synopsis, they think the demographic for the film are women over 40, and what I’ve noticed is people in their 20s are much more engaged and moved. Maybe it’s just that distance, or [that] the romantic side of it really appeals to younger people, which I find interesting because I didn’t really expect that. But also I found that a lot of people were dealing with parents and grandparents who were going through Alzheimer’s. I’ve heard a lot of really interesting personal stories.
So now that you have a feature under your belt, do you want to focus more on directing or acting? Or do you want to balance the two?
I’m kind of determined to balance both. I love both equally and for completely different reasons, and I exercise completely different parts of my brain. I love having that responsibility [...] but I also love giving myself over and supporting somebody else’s vision and helping them make their film as opposed to doing it myself. Because I’m new to filmmaking and so excited by it, it might take up more of my time, but I just don’t want to cut the acting out. I really love doing it.
Do you have any films you want to direct?
I’m just in the middle of writing something, so we’ll see. It’s in its really early stages, but the idea is to deal with the same concepts about love but with people in their 20s and to see what that felt like. Those issues in terms of that kind of love versus that kind of chemical, thermonuclear love and how people make those kinds of decisions when they’re still so driven by hormones.
Going back to your early career, when you were growing up, did you feel like people were setting conditions for you as an actor? Did that contribute to your wanting more say when you grew up?
Not necessarily, because I felt like I had an enormous amount of independence as a kid. As much as I maybe wouldn’t let my kid be an actor and maybe don’t think that was the right thing for me, I was given an enormous amount of responsibility and independence since I was a little kid, and I felt oddly in control, even if I wasn’t.
Your much-publicized decision to pull out of the role of Penny Lane in Almost Famous when you were barely out of your teens suggested you had a lot more self-possession than most people could have mustered in that situation.
What was weird about that was it ended up being such a pivotal moment for me in terms of my life. At the time, it seemed like it really defined the course of my acting career, absolutely. And I really did focus on what kind of films I wanted to participate in. But then it also [changed] my life in every other way. Like it was just such a weird landmark because [when] I quit, I all of a sudden had three or four months when I wasn’t doing anything. I decided not to do this thing that everyone thought I was supposed to want, so if I didn’t want it, then what did I want? I kind of fell into this depression where I was completely lost and without any kind of direction or anchor. And in that time I had this idea on a whim to make this short film, which I had never considered doing before. In the course of making it, I was like, “Oh my god, this is what I want to do.” So I kind of found out I wanted to be a filmmaker because I dropped out of that film. And I also needed an editor and people recommended this guy who I ended up marrying. I just feel like if I hadn’t dropped out of that film, my life would have nothing in common with it now, and I don’t think I ever would have figured out I wanted to make films, I don’t think I would have met my husband [film editor David Wharnsby]. It’s just really odd how saying no to something can sometimes be saying yes to everything else without you knowing it.
It seems like it would have been so easy to say yes instead, and to get whisked away to that whole celebrity parallel universe.
It would have been literally my worst nightmare. It’s not to say that I don’t think it’s a life worth living or that it doesn’t have merit. It’s just that I wouldn’t be capable of getting through it with any kind of happiness or sanity. But I think I knew that about myself at that age. It’s funny because when I look back, I see what a mess I was and how little I knew about myself, and I am actually kind of impressed that I knew enough not to do that film. But I don’t think I really knew why I was dropping out; I kept thinking I wasn’t the right person for the part, but I couldn’t figure it out beyond that. In retrospect I think I really could have destroyed myself with that level of exposure that that age. I don’t know that I would have survived it.
In Canada, you’ve long been known for your political beliefs and activism as much as your acting career. Was it ever a concern for you that your visibility as an actor would make people take your political beliefs less seriously?
It was, it still is. I think this is a really complicated hornet’s nest of an issue, because on the one hand, it’s absurd how much criticism actors take for talking about politics when, like, it’s far more more offensive when they go on about their favorite designers. But at the same time I don’t think we [as actors] should become dumb about it; we shouldn’t put blinders on to how this impacting or if it is impacting at all. Actors are an easy target and are easily dismissed, and we need to kind of be weighing that in terms of being involved in an intelligent way without compromising the causes [we’re] involved with. And that’s tough. It’s just such a delicate line because on the one hand, it’s great when people support causes and stick their neck out. And on the other hand, a lot of organizations I’ve been involved in have placed way too much stock in the idea of an actor taking up their cause and helping them as opposed to distracting from them. We should be really cognizant of when the story becomes about the actor taking up the cause as opposed to the cause itself. So for myself, I feel like, yeah, I was a political activist, but I was a political activist because I feel like one of the only things I know I can do well is organize. I’m not a good spokesperson and I was constantly being thrust into [that] role for these organizations and in fact what I was good at was getting on the phone or organizing a concert. I wasn’t all that great about going on talk shows and talking about those causes. [It’s] a constant struggle with myself where I feel like people overestimate how useful I can be as a frontperson and underestimate how useful I can be behind the scenes.
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Sarah Polley wears dress, necklace, and shoes by Betsey Johnson.
Photo by May Truong • Styling by Jill Carr • Hair & makeup by Indiana Allemang
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Flint Marx is a New York–based writer, baker, and former film editor of Venus Zine.
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