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. Despite the fact that the family had watched Diane battle the cancer that eventually killed her, when she died everyone was shocked. Sarah Polley received the shattering news in the fall of 2006, just after launching Away From Her, her Oscar-nominated feature-directing debut. 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 . 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. I pass more than one itinerant woman in shabby chic clothes. That same year, she played one of the lead characters in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. During her childhood, the case had understandably been "underplayed". "[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 I remember him saying to make her laugh: 'I never could stand dancing with a woman who cried.'" The death came as a shock, even though her father and older . The essays often link moments from her childhood, adolescence and adulthood, spanning her experiences as an artist and entertainer, a mother, a daughter and a woman. But Sarah Polley, a professional performer from childhood, blossomed into a fine young actress: in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter , David Cronenberg's eX istenZ , Kathryn Bigelow's The Weight of Water . She also talked to Michael Polley and her biological father, along with other family and friends affected by the news. The acclaimed Canadian film-maker talks about the often painful burden of exploring the lives of loved ones and why she thinks marriage is a 'crazy and optimistic' institution, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Sarah Polley: 'Stories are our way of coping, of creating shape out of mess', Sarah Polley: Stories We Tell Photograph: Roadside Attractions/Rex Features, Stories We Tell review Sarah Polleys complex love letter to her parents, Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell: watch the acclaimed documentary here, Sarah Polley: 'We're all kind of ugly in our relationships', Show us your favourite photo of your parents, Stories We Tell: watch the trailer for Sarah Polley's new film - video, Readers' favourite photos of their parents. 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. This entry, titled Alice, Collapsing, is one that Polley said shed made multiple attempts at completing since she was 19. 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. This family consists of Sarah's sister Susy (51), a thoughtful GP, and her brother John (50), a winningly camp casting director the children of Sarah's mother's first marriage Mark (45), a delightful lawyer, and Joanna (41), an attractive teacher with a PhD in philosophy. Her first appearance on screen was at the age of four,[20] as Molly in the film One Magic Christmas. Polley decided to reconstruct her family history with well-intentioned if not always reliable narrators in "Stories We Tell." And though that might keep another director occupied, it's just the start here, because no two children, no two friends no two lovers, even paint the same portrait of Diane Polley. Her role in the 2003 film My Life Without Me garnered the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in 2004. Stories We Tell, written and directed by Sarah Polley, is a film of the life and subsequent loss of her mother, the Canadian actress and casting director Diane Polley. [67] In June 2013, she received the National Arts Centre Award recognizing achievement over the past performance year at the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, where she was the subject of a short vignette by Ann Marie Fleming entitled Stories Sarah Tells. But now she has unveiled the puzzle of her parentage in an enthralling documentary, Stories We Tell, which premiered at festivals in Venice and Toronto to the acclaim of critics. She used existing footage from home Super 8 movies and old photographs with confessional interviews from her brothers and sisters. [57], In January 2012, Polley endorsed Toronto MP Peggy Nash in the 2012 New Democratic Party leadership race to succeed Jack Layton. Please enter a term before submitting your search. Presenting a Rashomon-like maze of contradictory interviews, Polley puts her entire family on camera, including her four siblings and two dads. Digital Spy - Movie News. Diane Polley died on January 10, 1990, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada of cancer. The story of her mother's affair and her biological father Harry Gulkin, producer of the film Lies My Father Told Me (1975), was chronicled in Polley's film Stories We Tell (2012). . He looked up to his kids. But over a period of nearly four years, she recuperated, emerging with restored focus and with an upgraded philosophical outlook that has infused nearly every aspect of her life. Those reminiscences about an elusive mother turn into a search for clues that will literally explain how this filmmaker came into the world. Run Towards the Danger is out next month. (Recommended). Along the way Polley discovered new footage of her mother, including an audition tape of her singing Aint Misbehavin. The stark, black and white close-up shot captured Diane Polley in a vulnerable state trying out for a project she desperately wanted to land. Science fiction is really about now', "Netflix Nabs Sarah Polley Miniseries Based on Margaret Atwood True-Crime Novel", "Sarah Polley will adapt and direct John Green's 'Looking for Alaska', "Amy Pascal, Sarah Polley Team on 'Little Women' Remake at Sony (Exclusive)", "Why it's a perfect time for Greta Gerwig's version of 'Little Women', "Why Rebecca Thomas Directing John Green's 'Looking For Alaska' Is A Big Deal", "John Green Dodges Questions About Looking for Alaska Movie Replacement", "Putting Timothy Olyphant in a silly Santa hat only makes him more menacing", "Frances McDormand to Star in 'Women Talking' From Director Sarah Polley", "Telluride Unveils Lineup of Films to "Fight About", "https://deadline.com/2022/11/women-talking-christmas-release-date-rooney-mara-sarah-polley-1235175344/", https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/women_talking, "When a Single Conversation Can Mean Life or Death", "Nominating Peter Kormos for the Ontario NDP leadership was the proudest moment of my life", "Sarah Polley's new work gets Oscar debut", "Sarah Polley pulls her name from Heart and Stroke film over Becel sponsorship", "The matter with The Heart is product endorsement", "Sarah Polley strips name from Oscar short", "Sarah Polley picks Peggy Nash for NDP leader", "Sarah Polley: The Men You Meet Making Movies", "Sarah Polley makes only movies she'd see - from indies to zombie flicks", "Sarah Polley talks of her 'whole new level' of breastfeeding while screening latest film in Colorado", http://alumni2.westernu.ca/fam/western-law/2018/western-law-welcomes-new.html, "Sarah Polley breaks silence about traumatic encounter with Jian Ghomeshi", "2010 Inductees for The Canada Honours Announced", "NFB shorts: Stories Sarah Tells, Canadian Famous and Daniel Lanois", "Sarah Polley, Blue Rodeo founders join Order of Canada", "Sarah Polley named ACTRA's Woman of the Year", "Sarah Polley's 'Stories We Tell' wins Writers Guild award", Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress, Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Screenplay, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best First Film, Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Breakthrough Filmmaker, San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Satellite Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sarah_Polley&oldid=1142761912, Best Actress Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners, Best Director Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners, Best First Feature Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners, Best Screenplay Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners, Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Canadian Screen Award winners, Canadian people of Russian-Jewish descent, Directors of Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners for Best Live Action Short Drama, Directors of Genie and Canadian Screen Award winners for Best Documentary Film, Governor General's Performing Arts Award winners, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Main role (seasons 15), guest (seasons 67), Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in 2007, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Series, Best Performance in a Children's or Youth Program or Series, Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series, Best Performance by an Actress in a Continuing Leading Dramatic Role, Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role, Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega (2011), This page was last edited on 4 March 2023, at 06:30. You will then receive an email that contains a secure link for resetting your password, If the address matches a valid account an email will be sent to __email__ with instructions for resetting your password. ", 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". To update your cookie settings, please visit the Cookie Preference Center for this site. 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. A decade later, hours before she was to introduce a Montreal screening of Away From Her her first film as a director and one that would land her an Oscar nomination a secret that had been buried all of her 28 years suddenly burst into the open: Michael Polley was not her biological father. Polley's mother, casting director and actress Diane Polley, died of cancer the same week the show premiered. 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. Like his siblings, he felt skeptical that anyone outside the family would care about the story, but he was also energized by the experience. 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. Subsequently this led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (1990-1996). I realized, thats my dad, she says. And during the ceremony, when the congregation was asked whether anyone objected, five hands went up. George Bernard Shaw wrote: "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." To be reintroduced to her world with such detail and such a brilliant sense of self-observation, so many years later, was really shocking.. Sarah has related how the discovery of her biological father made her physically ill. She was bedridden for two week and had a fever. And Stories We Tell, five years in the making, is no exception. It was at this time that she famously got "roughed up" by riot police protesting at a conservative government cutting welfare benefits and lost two back teeth. [21] The show was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the United States. Canadian actress, film director and screenwriter, Western University (2018). She did so much perhaps it is not such a surprise she died at 53.". [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. Harry Gulkin Harry Gulkin is a Montreal producer, who had an affair with Sarah's mother, Diane. She was competent and beautiful [unusual to dovetail these adjectives]. Two days after her 11th birthday, Sarah Polley lost her mother to cancer. She was an actress and casting director, known for Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983), Encounter (1952) and The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985). One section of the film recounts how Diane left her first husband for Michael and in the process lost custody of John and Susy; she made headlines as the first Canadian woman to be denied custody because of her adulterous affair. She adds: "I love living here I have always lived here, it is an easy city.". Polley was in the midst of another film project, an adaptation of Miriam Toewss novel Women Talking that she wrote and directed, when the pandemic forced its temporary suspension. And now here it is: Cafe Diplomatico, Little Italy, nicknamed "the Dip", which has been open for business for 45 years a Toronto landmark. St. Joseph Communications uses cookies for personalization, to customize its online advertisements, and for other purposes. A snap of Sarah and Michael shows them smiling alongside a tall snowman they had created: an image of playful togetherness. What binds the "children" is their mother, Diane Polley an actress and casting director who died when Sarah was 11. She sees the harnessing of his writing talent as "something my mother always wanted, a last thing I could do for her". Its different if somebody else is indiscreet about you.. 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. Ive never sat down and spoken on camera about personal stuff, so I was nervous and it was tiring and probably therapeutic in some ways, he said. Update this section! Genealogy profile for Diane Elizabeth Polley. She looks like a contemplative Madonna on screen, with long, fair hair. ), I feel a relief in finally just standing up, she said. Western Law 2018 Alumni Magazine, 2018. When Diane died, on 10 January, 1990, Sarah and Michael were left to their own devices. There were other things she did not share with her siblings either. That experience gravely affected her children and serves as something of an explanation as to why she did not leave Michael for Sarahs father. There is just this messiness to the human experience thats extraordinarily inconvenient if youre trying to tell one story about it, she said. We break the ice not that there is much to break with talk of Toronto. Polley also appeared in 44 episodes of the Canadian drama Street Legal. [34] It received positive reviews from critics. Since making the film, she volunteers, she keeps hearing stories far more "extraordinary" than her own. But Ill always wonder if its just too little too late. The results knocked me on my ass, says Polley, sipping cider in a caf around the corner from her Toronto home. I got really, really ill. It is not often you get that freedom interviewing." [40], In a 2015 retrospective of the movie Go, Mike D'Angelo of The A.V. That was such a relief, said Polley, whose next project is adapting Margaret Atwoods Alias Grace. This was something that compelled me. Mum was adventuresome but trapped, says . I never believed the secret could be kept this long, says Polley, sitting down for her first interview about the movie, scheduled for release Oct. 12. She used to think her "vibrant but distracted not engaged enough with me". In advance of the film's airing in Canada during the 82nd Academy Awards, and following news reports that characterized the film as a marketing exercise for the margarine company Becel,[51][52][53] Polley withdrew her association with the film. [42] It premiered at the 49th Telluride Film Festival on September 2, 2022, and went into wide release on December 23, 2022. Copyright 2023 Elsevier Inc. except certain content provided by third parties. Diane Polley was used to harsh judgment. I wasnt interested in exposing myself, said Polley, 34, whose diminutive stature belies a striking ambition. She encourages her family to speak. When I agreed to make this film ["The Heart"], I was thrilled, as I was proud to be associated with the work of this incredible organization. Critical response has praised the film's artistry and Polley's acting. Herself a well-established actor, writer, and director in her native Canada, Sarah was nominated for an Oscar for her writing for the 2006 film Away From Her, which she also directed. 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 am compulsively early I get to airports three hours early." Another friend, Mort Ransen, speaks of her fear of cancer and likens her to a trembling bird. Last years Telluride and Toronto film festivals elicited rave reviews for the documentary and Indiewire called it the finest of Polleys filmmaking skills and New York Magazine referred to Polley as a gifted actress and possibly more gifted writer-director. I did get to spend so much time with everybody my mom was close to and ask them for hours uninterrupted about what she was like, she said. Sarah Polley says the affair was confirmed by a journalist who confronted her over keeping it a secret. Sarah Polley news, gossip, photos of Sarah Polley, biography, Sarah Polley boyfriend list 2023. . Polley emigrated to Canada, settling in the Toronto . The long slog gave Polley the chance to fill in many blanks about her mysterious matriarch. I think its a lot to absorb and kinda difficult.. 19 April 2015. In her new essay collection, Run Towards the Danger, the actress and filmmaker examines intensely personal stories shes still sorting out for herself. Probably not. But when she contemplates Gilliam, it doesnt help me particularly to think of him as a villain. (A press representative for Gilliam said he was unavailable for comment.). [23] Polley ended her run early claiming complications from scoliosis. While Polley was recuperating from her concussion, Atwood said she held the rights to her novel Alias Grace a book that Polley first asked her if she could adapt when she was 17 so that she could complete a TV mini-series based on it. [17] She was awarded the CAN$100,000 prize for best Canadian film of the year by the Toronto Film Critics Association. 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. 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. Gulkin says he was utterly besotted, and after she gave birth to Sarah, at 42, we remained in love for a very long time.. But storyteller Sarah decided to face her family issues through a new documentary entitled Stories We Tell. It took Polley almost a year before she could bring herself to tell the man who raised her that she doesnt share his genes. Sarah Polley at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. 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. Diane Kucera stands in her usual spot behind the sleek, It was "a very, very dark period. It drew rave reviews from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and the three Toronto dailies, both for the performances of Christie and her co-star, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent, and for Polley's direction. Stories We Tell was produced by the National . Sarah then spent five years delving deeply into her family history. In 2006, she directed Away From Her, about a woman suffering from Alzheimer's (Julie Christie was nominated for an Oscar). I have never seen a city with glossier, better tended roses. [45] Shirley Li of The Atlantic called it "vibrant cinema," while Anna Bogutskaya of Time Out (magazine) said that it "imagines female emancipation as an honest, raging, caring experience. The lady is not a tramp the tramp is a lady. Her film may be her story but she gets others to tell it. Its a 19th-century tale of a Canadian servant convicted of murder, so this one hopefully wont strike as close to home. Yet the pressure was on because I wanted to get it all right and authentic for Sarah and the story that was unfolding for her.. 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? In its first chapter, Run Towards the Danger offers a melancholy reflection on Polleys teenage struggles with scoliosis, her body horror juxtaposed with several anxious, frustrating months spent playing the lead in a Stratford Festival production of Alice Through the Looking Glass. Her mother died of cancer when Polley was 11; her father sank into a depression and by age 14 the author had left home to move in with an older brothers ex-girlfriend and largely figure out the world for herself. She was an actress and casting director, known for Philip Marlowe, Private Eye (1983), Encounter (1952) and The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985). October 11, 2012, Ken Woroner/National Film Board of Canada, Sarah Polley received the shattering news in the fall of 2006, just after launching Away From Her, her Oscar-nominated feature-directing debut. The news also sent ripples through her extended family, with the story being told and examined from multiple points of view by her four older brothers and sisters, her uncle, her mothers friends and others. But its kind of exhilarating, realizing that whatever story youve been telling about yourself and everyone tells those stories isnt you. June 12, 2022 by by But being candid doesnt mean that you always know what the truth is. Disney executives asked her to remove it, and she refused. Two days after her 11th birthday, Sarah Polley lost her mother to cancer. Even so, Polley said she was beset by self-doubt, constantly questioning what she felt was an irrational need to make the movie. I wanted people to have the same question in their minds. 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.. Copyright 2023 St. Joseph Communications. As she grew up in Toronto under the care of her father, Michael, Polleys conception of her mother was fuzzily constructed from memories, photographs and family stories. Polley in the present day, with her Super-8 camera. And now, on an overcast, humid morning, I am hurrying to meet her in downtown Toronto, through streets that seem a cross between Dalston and Cape Cod. [61][62] They have three children together. When its symptoms were at their worst, Polley, the preternaturally poised actor (The Sweet Hereafter) and filmmaker of probing dramas (Away From Her, Take This Waltz), could not concentrate on her family or her screenwriting. For one battle scene, she was repeatedly made to run a terrifying gantlet of explosives and debris. [50] In 2003, she was part of former Toronto mayor David Miller's transition advisory team. We became very close." 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. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. [64][65], On October 16, 2010, it was announced that she would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame. In the film, that is what Sarahdoes. What is moving is how keenly everyone feels the loss of Diane, more than 20 years on. [13] Gulkin's paternity was later confirmed by a DNA test. She listens more than she talks. And it is complicated because, in a family, as Polley points out, everyone is "committed" to their own version of the truth. "I felt closer to you than I ever felt about the other children," he tells her, explaining that he'd always shared her siblings' attention with their mom. Sarah now smarts on her mother's behalf to think of the "shame" she must have felt. At the 2008 Genies, she was also awarded the Claude Jutra Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement by a first-time feature film director.[29]. [7] In 2022 she wrote and directed the film Women Talking earning her second Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. Including the filmmaker, whose previous fictional treks behind the camera the Alzheimer's love story Away from Her, for instance have hardly been conventional. Even when it is at its most uncomfortable, he seems in his element. The disease was already at stage IV, the most advanced, and had spread to his lymph. I have never actively promoted any corporate brand, and cannot do so now. 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. [13] Meeting with Gulkin as just someone who could provide information about Diane in Montreal, he informed Polley of his affair with Diane. Stories We Tell opened in US theatres on 10 May 2013 and is rated PG13. He was holding her on his feet as she couldn't stand and she started crying. Now Sarah has given him one. Michael Polley is the film's chief narrator. Sarah was "staggered" to find an article that coldly spelt out that, for Diane, this was "the cost of adultery". They held off for 20 years until she was ready to make the show. She emerges as a woman who had the gallantry to treat life like a party even when it did not return the compliment. Thats always going to be with me.. They divorced five years later, in 2008.