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I have never seen a city with glossier, better tended roses. What got me interested was my fathers unusual and unexpected response to the news. A young Sarah Polley and her actor father, Michael Polley, on a long-ago day; the photo is one of many family memories that surface in Stories We Tell, a superb meditation on dramatizing memory from the director of Away from Her. The 82-year-old icon, known for her roles in The Avengers and more recently Game of Thrones, had . how long does crab paste last; is gavin hardcastle married; cut myself shaving down there won't stop bleeding Sarah Polley received the shattering news in the fall of 2006, just after launching Away From Her, her Oscar-nominated feature-directing debut. On a Saturday morning this past January, Polley was speaking in a video interview from her home in Toronto. She has a transparent complexion and guileless smile. He'd speak to you with respect. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1470-2045(13)70470-4, We use cookies to help provide and enhance our service and tailor content and ads. 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. And Polley believes: "We blame relationships for that gap. Dainty as a dancer, she is wearing a blue denim jacket, a scarlet shirt and sneakers to match. But I can do nothing else. The death came as a shock, even though her father and older siblings had watched Diane Polley battle the disease for months. [17] In 2017, Polley executive produced the film A Better Man (2017),[31], In late 2012, Polley announced that she would be adapting Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace. Thats always going to be with me.. Diane Polley was a Canadian actor and casting director. Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter, Western University (2018). [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. She was nominated as Best European Actress by the European Film Academy for her role as Hanna. Privacy PolicyTerms and ConditionsAccessibility, To read this article in full you will need to make a payment. Michael Polley and Sarahs biological father also speak at length on camera, each discussing the woman they loved, their relationship with her and even their feelings about the other man. The interviews are remarkably candid, with the main players expressing a wide range of emotions: regret, empathy and self-criticism. The film is a loving but complicated homage. When Sarah was 11 years old, Diane died of cancer. But I made the film to have agency in how the story was going to be told. Documentaries dont usually require spoiler alerts. 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. Besides, what gives the film its distinction are the questions it raises that reach beyond plot: do we own our own stories or do they own us? It includes many friends all of whom have versions of her. Type; Trigger: 2010: Hillary . When actress mom Diane Polley died, Sarah was just eleven. To be reintroduced to her world with such detail and such a brilliant sense of self-observation, so many years later, was really shocking.. I feel really committed to it. The results knocked me on my ass, says Polley, sipping cider in a caf around the corner from her Toronto home. [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. There is a memorable line from Take This Waltz that goes: "Life has a gap in it, it just does." She exposes the filmmaking process by filming set-up shots and voice-over sessions while hiding other details; in particular her personal response to the shocking revelation. Polley also appeared in 44 episodes of the Canadian drama Street Legal. ), I feel a relief in finally just standing up, she said. Nevertheless, she followed her mothers footsteps into acting, taking to the Canadian stage as a child and at 18 catching the attention of U.S. audiences after her role in The Sweet Hereafter.. Toronto, Toronto Division, Ontario, Canada (cancer) Place of Burial: Toronto, Toronto Division, ON, Canada: Immediate Family: . The seriesat least in the beginning, before Polley lost interest in acting and left the showfocused on Polley's character, Sarah Stanley, a girl who had lost her mother and was sent to be raised by her maiden aunts. But being candid doesnt mean that you always know what the truth is. What is different is that she is hospitably voluble. Hopefully, over time, we can loosen our iron grip and let other complexities in., https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/books/sarah-polley-run-towards-the-danger.html, As I get older, Sarah Polley said, Im realizing its OK for stories to be messy or go down circuitous paths that dont lead anywhere.. Polley credits the organization with pushing her to persevere when she was ready to abandon the project. I was hiring her as an actress. Western Law 2018 Alumni Magazine, 2018. With a seamless weaving of home movies real and faux, Polley conjures up her mother as a vivacious party girl. But she wants to impress on me that she still regards her story as ordinary, whatever others may say. Sarah even found and filmed a newspaper cutting reporting on the case. She "reads" the text of her mother's life through the eyes and memories of others so that she may read and construct the text of her own life. I somehow conflated finding this out with the idea that I created the situation.. The long slog gave Polley the chance to fill in many blanks about her mysterious matriarch. Feb. 17, 2022. What they have in common, she said, is that they chronicle events from the past that have been fundamentally changed by my relationship to them in the present., They were things I didnt talk about, because I didnt know what the stories even were, Polley, 43, added. Im indiscreet about myself sometimes. Signup for our newsletter to get notified about our next ride. During her recovery, Polley gave up her screenwriting duties on a film version of Louisa May Alcotts Little Women, which instead was written and directed by Greta Gerwig. The film mixes Super 8 home-movie footage and convincing reconstructions also shot in Super 8 Diane is played by Rebecca Jenkins (who knew her in life). Diane is a socialite, who feels hemmed in by her introverted husband. He received it all with so much equanimity it was unreal, says Polley, 33. What's more, there is a freedom now, a sense that "the story does not belong to anyone". June 12, 2022 by by Sarah Polley says the affair was confirmed by a journalist who confronted her over keeping it a secret. 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? The series premiered in 2017 on CBC Television in Canada; it streams on Netflix globally, outside of Canada. Polley and her siblings found the story becoming the focus of many a dinner party, with each of them highlighting a different aspect of the tale as it related to their own history. 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. It was heartbreaking.. "I think marriage is crazy and optimistic and that is what is great about it. And my biological father was also writing about it. In 1994 Polley made her theatre debut at the Stratford Festival playing Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's book of the same name. It is the remembering that matters. Polley made her feature film directorial debut with Away from Her (2006), for which she won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Director and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. She also talked to Michael Polley and her biological father, along with other family and friends affected by the news. Critics have responded to Stories We Tell as a significant step in Polleys evolution as a filmmaker. It also earned Polley a 2007 Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay,[4] and won the Genie Award for Best Achievement in Direction. The death came as a shock, even though her father and older siblings had watched Diane Polley battle the disease for months. [7] In 2022 she wrote and directed the film Women Talking earning her second Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. She describes him as "a really great person" but the marriage did not last and, in 2011, she married David Sandomierski, a lawyer with whom she has a 16-month-old daughter named Eve. Sarah Polley at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. But Polleys choice to share herself in Run Towards the Danger did not make him anxious in the same way, and he praised her for taking the risk and acknowledging her own vulnerability. Youre not just borrowing from yourself youre putting yourself on the line.. Sarah now smarts on her mother's behalf to think of the "shame" she must have felt. The following year, she starred as part of the ensemble cast in the film Go. She was previously married to Michael Polley and George Deans-Buchan. [10] You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Michael Polley is the Anglo-Canadian actor best known for his connection to the actress-director Sarah Polley, the offspring of his late wife, Diane Polley.Michael Polley was born in England in 1933 and studied acting during the 1950s; one of his classmates was Albert Finney, who compared the profession of acting to that of bricklaying. This is a fantastic moment in the film (no reconstruction involved). Polley's mom died in 1990 of cancer, and her father remembers bonding then with his youngest daughter. Polley is hardly a novice when it comes to untangling knotty personal narratives in front of an audience. A Refuge from Cancer Patient: Diane K. Age: 54 Diagnosis: February 16, 2011 Types: Invasive Lobular Carcinoma and Invasive Ductal Carcinoma It's a hot March, Saturday afternoon and patrons begin pouring into the cozy confines of Refuge Brewery. "Diane Polley, 54 was actress, talent agent", http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/471412111.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jan+11%2C+1990&author=Sid+Adilman+Toronto+Star&pub=Toronto+Star&desc=Diane+Polley%2C+54+was+actress%2C+talent+agent&pqatl=google, "Sarah Polley recalls her own sorrow with new role in `My LIfe'", http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/bostonherald/access/421326461.html?dids=421326461:421326461&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Oct+09%2C+2003&author=Stephen+Schaefer&pub=Boston+Herald&desc=MOVIES%3B+Sarah+Polley+recalls+her+own+sorrow+with+new+role+in+%60My+LIfe%27&pqatl=google, "Sarah Polley popolnoma zaljubljena v igro [Sarah Polley completely in love with the game]", http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.siol.net%2Ftv%2Fzanimivosti%2F2011%2F04%2Fsarah_polley.aspx&date=2012-10-12, "Loretta says it's genetics that make her look younger", http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/thestar/access/470726331.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jul+17%2C+1989&author=Rita+Zekas+Toronto+Star&pub=Toronto+Star&desc=Loretta+says+it%27s+genetics+that+make+her+look+younger&pqatl=google, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0689568/filmotype, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=15IuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UqEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2842,1622127&dq=diane-polley&hl=en, "'Anne of Green Gables' star Jonathan Crombie dies at age 48", http://www.ctvnews.ca/entertainment/anne-of-green-gables-star-jonathan-crombie-dies-at-age-48-1.2333898, "'Anne of Green Gables' Star Jonathan Crombie dies at 48", http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/jonathan-crombie-dead-anne-green-789940, "Sarah Polleys new film reveals her secret parentage", http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/sarah-polleys-new-film-reveals-her-secret-parentage/article4508957/, http://en.wikialpha.org/mediawiki/index.php?title=Diane_Polley&oldid=160918. In the documentary, it is revealed that he is Sarah's biological father. There were four or five very close years we had together then. Sarah Ellen Polley OC (born January 8, 1979) is a Canadian filmmaker, political activist and retired actress. She sat in a brightly lit room, undaunted by the prospect of staring into a computer monitor for an hour or so and putting herself under a microscope. Part of this is figuring out, what the hell happened?. Director Atom Egoyan, who cast Polley in The Sweet Hereafter and has remained close to the actress, said he was astounded by her progress as a director. Stories We Tell opened in US theatres on 10 May 2013 and is rated PG13. The movie, starring Julie Christie (with whom she had played in No Such Thing, 2001, and The Secret Life of Words, 2005), debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2006, as part of the TIFF's Gala showcase. And telling it has brought her closer to Michael. St. Joseph Communications uses cookies for personalization, to customize its online advertisements, and for other purposes. Polley had five children, several of whom followed their parents into theatre, including her youngest, actor and director Sarah Polley. Including the filmmaker, whose previous fictional treks behind the camera the Alzheimer's love story Away from Her, for instance have hardly been conventional. 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". She previously directed the 2012 documentary Stories We Tell, which used interviews with her family members and re-enactments to reveal that her own birth had been the result of her mothers affair with a man who was not the father who raised her. 19 April 2015. And she has not given up on it now although with the directing and writing (she is working on a screenplay of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace) there has been no spare time. Before marrying Michael Polley, she was front-page news when she left her first husband and became the first Canadian mother to lose custody of her children (Sarahs half-sister and brother). Yet a few pages later, Polley finds herself regretting that she absolved Gilliam too easily, having bought into the archetype of the out-of-control white male genius: Its so pervasive, this idea that genius cant come without trouble, that it has paved the way for countless abuses, she writes. It was really interesting to have a big drama in your own life, and have this need to make it into narrative.. [8][9], Polley's son John Buchan is also a casting director. Polley's mother, casting director and actress Diane Polley, died of cancer the same week the show premiered. Despite Polleys comfort in front of the camera, turning her lens inward was no easy feat. "I remember Johnny saying [that] your father might be someone that Mum had acted with in a play," one brother observes. Gulkin says he was utterly besotted, and after she gave birth to Sarah, at 42, we remained in love for a very long time.. At 18 Sarah followed her mothers footsteps into the acting profession and caught a break when audiences responded to her performance in The Sweet Hereafter. 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 also wrote the miniseries Alias Grace,[6] based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. A talented actress ("The Sweet Hereafter") turned gifted director ("Away From Her," "Take This Waltz"), she initially structures "Stories We Tell" as an attempt to discover more about her mother,. The officiator just said: never mind." Two days after her 11th birthday, Sarah Polley lost her mother to cancer. In the film, that is what Sarahdoes. Another friend, Mort Ransen, speaks of her fear of cancer and likens her to a trembling bird. I find that really gratifying. Sarah grew up with a family joke that she did not look anything like her siblings. Since making the film, she volunteers, she keeps hearing stories far more "extraordinary" than her own. Polley searches for her own answers while asking some universal and often uncomfortable questions about betrayal, identity, the loss of trust and the definition of family. At least that was her story. The revelation of Polleys true parentage landed her in bed for two weeks, ill with a long fever. She adds: "I love living here I have always lived here, it is an easy city.". Film producer Harry Gulkin describes her magnetism and takes Sarah to task because he wants the story told his way. Yet her film also reveals that everyone has a subtly different story to tell. Polley in the present day, with her Super-8 camera. In fact, there was even speculation that their actress mother Diane, who died of cancer before Polley hit her teen years, had had an affair with an actor who she was appearing with in a play in Montreal. [24], Polley appeared as Lily on the CBC television series Straight Up. Though Polley never officially announced her retirement from acting she has not taken another acting role since 2010, transitioning into a writing and directing career. That essays written by four different people, she said. Mum was adventuresome but trapped, says a kid, dutiful but wild, says a confidant, talented (maybe) and unfulfilled (sometimes) and by many accounts a shy extrovert. Diane Kucera stands in her usual spot behind the sleek, Diane Polley died on January 10, 1990, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada of cancer. She made her feature-length film directing debut with Away from Her, which Polley adapted from the Alice Munro short story The Bear Came Over the Mountain.