Oscar Augury - Sarah Polley: Best Adapted Screenplay

Canadian Actress Walked Away from A-list Acting Career to Become a Filmmaker

Sarah Polley walked of the set of the film that was supposed to make her a star and returned to her native Canada to make a low-budget indie. She went to film school to learn directing & has received kudos for her feature film debut, Away From Her.

Sarah Polley has established herself as a double-threat in North American cinema, displaying world-class talents as both an actress and as a writer-director. Having already marked her territory as a gifted thespian, Polley wowed critics and the industry with her feature-film debut, Away From Her, which has brought her awards for Best First Film from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Blessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialog due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character's thoughts, the actress became a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films. Her performances are understated, a style she had brought to the screen as a director.

She also is renowned in her native Canada for her political activism. A socialist, she is committed to progressive politics as a member of the left-wing of Canada's left-of-center New Democratic Party. In 2004, she served on the transition team of incoming Toronto Mayor David Miller.

Sarah Polley also is known for her intelligence, which can be a curse for a performer, particularly in the cinema. 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. Her attendance at the Canadian Film Centre's film directing program gave her a new perspective on acting, both as an actor and as a realisatur, the director who realizes the vision caught on film.