"I'm interested in the way we tell stories about our lives," she says in the film, "about the fact that the truth about the past is often ephemeral and difficult to pin down.". [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. (Polley divorced her first husband in 2008 and remarried in 2011. I feel really committed to it. He received it all with so much equanimity it was unreal, says Polley, 33. "[46] [47] Polley was nominated for Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 95th Academy Awards, and the film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. And telling it has brought her closer to Michael. 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. Early reviews out of last years Telluride and Toronto film festivals were glowing. My dad is very open about this in the film. In 2011, her second film, Take This Waltz a love story starring Michelle Williams split opinion (I loved it; Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian could barely contain his contempt). Ten short years later she discovered the secret that her mother had kept hidden all Sarahs life, Michael Polley was not her father. I somehow conflated finding this out with the idea that I created the situation.. I didnt want to do it. She orders brunch ("two eggs over easy with bacon and HP sauce"). 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. After her first marriage failed, she was the first woman in Canada to lose custody of her children, permitted to see John and Susy only once a month.. She died on 10 January 1990 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Polley also appeared in 44 episodes of the Canadian drama Street Legal. [34] It received positive reviews from critics. 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. "When I watch the black-and-white footage of my mother auditioning, staring out into the audience, I feel maternal about her," Sarah says. When Diane died, on 10 January, 1990, Sarah and Michael were left to their own devices. Roadside Attractions We are never going to feel that life is complete but we live in an age that tells us that this is a problem." Polley also appeared in stage productions. Retrieved on March 17, 2020 from, "When asked what directors she admires, Polley talks about Ingmar Bergman and Terrence Malick (she says his, Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Genie Award for Best Achievement in Direction, 2012 New Democratic Party leadership race, Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, "Moviegoers pulled in by Gravity: Tiff Tweets", "Nobody's Starlet: Toronto's Sarah Polley is Only 20 but already a veteran actor so secure in her craft she can thumb her nose at Hollywood", "TIFF 2011: U2, Brad Pitt, George Clooney Films Featured At 2011 Toronto International Film Festival", "Sarah Polley to adapt Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace", "Stories We Tell: Sarah Polley's compassionate portrait of a complex, flawed woman: her mother", "An Actress with Doubts, but Not About Directing", "Stories We Tell: A post by Sarah Polley", "Venice Review: Sarah Polley Examines Her Own Family In Lovely, Fascinating 'Stories We Tell', "Sarah Polley reveals personal secret in new documentary", "Truth and Lies: A Q&A With Montreal Film Producer Harry Gulkin", "Sarah Polley doc wins Toronto critics' $100K prize", "Sarah Polley on Documenting Family Secrets", "OCAP took me in when I was 15, living on my own, with no community", "Sarah Polley at the Canadian Women Film Directors Database", "Sarah Polley's new film reveals her secret parentage", "Production / Event Register: Production Display", "Caught Through the Looking Glass: Sarah Polley on Grief, Girlhood, and Scoliosis", "Sarah Polley to receive Jutra trophy at Genies", "Exclusive: TIFF to host Polley's "Stories," Kastner's "Disco", "A Better Man documentary explores aftermath of abusive relationships", "Margaret Atwood: 'I am not a prophet. Sarah grew up with a family joke that she did not look anything like her siblings. 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 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. Thats always going to be with me.. She was previously married to Michael Polley and George Deans-Buchan. As the process of making Stories We Tell dragged on for years, Polley weathered ups and downs in her relationships with Michael Polley, her biological father and in her own marriage. It was "easy" to interview her family, she says, because, "There are no taboos at our dinner table. The lady is not a tramp the tramp is a lady. Polley also appeared in 44 episodes of the Canadian drama Street . I like bold gestures that aren't necessarily backed up by statistics. At the age of 12 (around 1991), Polley attended an awards ceremony while wearing a peace sign to protest the first Gulf War. George Bernard Shaw wrote: "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." And Stories We Tell, five years in the making, is no exception. In 2005, she starred in The Secret Life of Words, opposite Tim Robbins and Julie Christie. Polley's father, Michael Polley, was a regular on the show during its entire three-season run. Michael Polley is the film's chief narrator. Genealogy profile for Diane Elizabeth Polley. Polley played Elise in Jaco Van Dormael's Mr. Nobody, which was released in 2010. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Sarah has related how the discovery of her biological father made her physically ill. She was bedridden for two week and had a fever. The filmmaker realized this was something worthy of more detailed exploration and a documentary was born. But its kind of exhilarating, realizing that whatever story youve been telling about yourself and everyone tells those stories isnt you. And then she turns to me: do I have a family secret? hide caption. [61][63], In 2022, Polley said that she had been sexually assaulted by then Moxy Frvous singer Jian Ghomeshi while on a date when she was 16 and he was 28. 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. You cant be an artist unless you put yourself into it. All of which makes the stories Sarah Polley tells in Stories We Tell an enormously intriguing lot. I always knew that story, but I didnt know there was footage of it. During the making of the film, her sisters also divorced their spouses.) 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. Sarah Ellen Polley OC (born January 8, 1979) is a Canadian filmmaker, political activist and retired actress. "The result here is a more intricate self-portrait, since Diane's affairwhich Polley's search unearths and Sarah Polley grew up the fifth of five children in a Canadian theatrical family. In 2012 Polley's daughter Sarah directed a film about her own birth, after having confirmed, as an adult, that her conception was the result of an affair her mother had. When actress turned writer/director/producer Sarah Polley learned at the age of 28 that her father Michael Polley was not her biologicalfather and that she was, instead, the product of an illicit love affair by her late mother Diane Polley, her world turned upside down. Goes Out newsletter, with the week's best events, to help you explore and experience our city. Regretfully, I am forced to remove my name from the film and disassociate myself from it. Polley has written numerous essays over the years about her experiences as a child star. [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. In 1995, she lost two back teeth after being struck by a riot police officer during a protest against the provincial Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris in Queen's Park. He never strove for that. A DNA test confirmed her suspicions that the man. 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. 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. 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. Roadside Attractions Diane Kucera stands in her usual spot behind the sleek, Sarah Polleys biological father also took to the computer, creating his own narrative of the events that eventually led him to reveal his identity to her in Montreal. I dont think I ever resolved my self-doubt or my feelings of ambiguity about it. 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. She was nominated as Best European Actress by the European Film Academy for her role as Hanna. The biological one, Harry Gulkinthe producer of the Oscar-nominated Lies My Father Told Me (1975)met Diane when she was in Montreal starring in a play called Oh Toronto. In the essay, Polley reproduces an email exchange she had with Gilliam several years later, writing to him that i was pretty furious at you for a lot of years, though she says the adults who should have been there to protect me were my parents, not you. (Gilliam replies with an apology for the chaotic film shoot, writing, Although things might have seemed to be dangerous, they werent.). Another action sequence sent her to the hospital when a detonation startled a horse, causing it to thrust an explosive device in Polleys direction. Her mother used to laugh about it. While working as a casting director Polley helped discover the comedy group The kids in the hall, and later guest starred on their show. "And Dad joked about 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. 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. Diane is a socialite, who feels hemmed in by her introverted husband. It makes you nuts, said Polley, who said she would be content never to see the movie again. 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. Polley also revisits her work as a child actor in an essay called Mad Genius, about the making of Terry Gilliams 1988 fantasy The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. That film, for which she was cast at the age of 8 to play the Barons young companion, Sally Salt, left her deeply traumatized. It is permeable, unreliable and personal. ", Whatever the friendly difference of opinion about wedlock, the remarkable thing is that when pressed about her family's reaction to Stories We Tell, Sarah reveals that everyone is happy with the film and has been "supportive". Polley's mother, casting director and actress Diane Polley, died of cancer the same week the show premiered. She made her acting debut aged four and is critical of the way child actors are treated. 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 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). 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. 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. In another chapter, The Woman Who Stayed Silent, Polley revisits what she used to call a funny party story about my worst date ever with Jian Ghomeshi, the musician and former CBC radio host who in 2016 was acquitted of five charges related to sexual assault. Harry Gulkin Harry Gulkin is a Montreal producer, who had an affair with Sarah's mother, Diane. But actually, she is on her best behaviour. In her late 20s, Sarah Polley learned that her mother had had an affair with a film producer in Montreal, and that, although she was raised by Michael Polley, her mother's . I can imagine because I feel a similarly relaxed freedom talking to Sarah. Stories We Tell revolves firstly around Diane Polley, the director's energetic mother and sometimes stage actress, who died of cancer when Polley was eleven years old. He says, I encouraged her anytime she felt I was inadequate to have an affair, as long as she didnt leave me. When Polley was promoting Take This Waltz, someone noted that, like Away From Her, its about a stoical husband who faces betrayal without anger. At 14, she left home. [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. 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. Stories We Tell was produced by the National . even paint the same portrait of Diane Polley. His quirky, engagingly self-deprecatory commentary contributes hugely to the film's charm. [43] [44] It was released to widespread acclaim, with 90% of critics giving it a positive review on Rotten Tomatoes. I got really, really ill. Polley attended the Canadian Film Centre's directing program in 2001, and won the Genie Award for Best Live Action Short Drama in 2003 for her short film I Shout Love. Despite Polleys comfort in front of the camera, turning her lens inward was no easy feat. This soured her relationship with Disney, but she continued on Road to Avonlea until 1994.

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