what type of cancer did diane polley die from
Ten short years later she discovered the secret that her mother had kept hidden all Sarahs life, Michael Polley was not her father. [32] In August 2014, during a profile of her work as a director, Polley announced that Alias Grace was being adapted into a six-part miniseries. Polley's father, Michael Polley, was a regular on the show during its entire three-season run. [14][15][16] When Polley turned 18, she decided to follow up on suggestions from her mother's friends that her biological father might be Geoff Bowesone of three castmates from her mother's play in Montreal. He received it all with so much equanimity it was unreal, says Polley, 33. I sit in the shade and wait. I got really, really ill. In 2022 she released her first book of essays, the autobiographical, Run Towards the Danger which detailed her experiences in film, TV and on stage. No wonder Sarah feels her family's narrative has the stuff of drama. Polley's mom died in 1990 of cancer, and her father remembers bonding then with his youngest daughter. Starring: Michael Polley, Michael Polley, Sarah Polley. She took care of us brilliantly. And it is complicated because, in a family, as Polley points out, everyone is "committed" to their own version of the truth. Polley discovered as an adult that her biological father was actually Harry Gulkin, with whom her mother had an affair (as chronicled in Polley's film Stories We Tell). [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. Other moments are less conventional. . Polley, who became a mother herself during the making of this familial drama, found herself needing breaks during the long process, at one point leaving Stories We Tell for seven months to write and direct Take This Waltz, a narrative feature starring Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen released in the U.S. last year. Diane Polley died on January 10, 1990, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada of cancer. 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. And telling it has brought her closer to Michael. Stories We Tell has brought her family together, says Polley, but the five-year struggle to make it was painfulsitting in an editing room thinking about your childhood, and your mother whos gone. Like a child who feels responsible for her parents divorce, Polley felt guilty for uncovering the affair. What binds the "children" is their mother, Diane Polley an actress and casting director who died when Sarah was 11. 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. She already has a classy track record as a film director. And I remember him saying to make her laugh: 'I never could stand dancing with a woman who cried.'" [40], In a 2015 retrospective of the movie Go, Mike D'Angelo of The A.V. In 1996, she gave a nomination speech for Kormos at the ONDP leadership convention which she later referred to as the "proudest moment in [her] life".[48]. I had known this story my whole life about this part she wanted and she didnt get and she thought of it as a pivotal moment in her life, and it really broke her heart, said Polley. And then Sarah tells me at my prompting about her last memory of her mother: "A few days before she died and just before she went into a coma, I remember Dad dancing with her to Blue Spanish Eyes one of her favourite songs. 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. 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. She also peels back the filmmaking process, filming set-up shots and voice-over sessions while obfuscating other details, particularly her personal response to the shocking revelation. "In December 2009, I made a film to be aired during the Academy Awards that I believed was to promote the Heart and Stroke Foundation. With: Michael Polley, Sarah Polley, Diane Polley. He taught himself to cook "amazingly". There was nothing I felt uncomfortable asking. 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. Subsequently this led to her role as Sara Stanley in the Canadian television series Road to Avonlea (19901996). Including the filmmaker, whose previous fictional treks behind the camera the Alzheimer's love story Away from Her, for instance have hardly been conventional. In 1999, Polley made her first short film, The Best Day of My Life,[20] for the On the Fly 4 Film Festival. 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. In the documentary, it is revealed that he is Sarah's biological father. But at a certain point, a certain amount of money has been spent and you cant go back anymore., VIDEO: Upcoming summer films ENVELOPE: The latest awards buzz PHOTOS: Greatest box office flops. [50] In 2003, she was part of former Toronto mayor David Miller's transition advisory team. Early reviews out of last years Telluride and Toronto film festivals were glowing. On the upside, the experience afforded her the opportunity to more intimately understand her mother. His quirky, engagingly self-deprecatory commentary contributes hugely to the film's charm. [21] The show was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the United States. She closely examined the details of Diane Polleys life, from a career perspective and her tumultuous private life. All Polley's films, in different ways, explore marriage and its complexities with compassionate grace. Polley credits the organization with pushing her to persevere when she was ready to abandon the project. Another action sequence sent her to the hospital when a detonation startled a horse, causing it to thrust an explosive device in Polleys direction. She also wrote the miniseries Alias Grace,[6] based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. I find that really gratifying. Thats always going to be with me.. Her subsequent interactions with Ghomeshi friendly radio interviews and playful emails in the years that followed could be used to undermine her credibility and attack her character. The 3rd Summit of the Americas was held in Quebec City in April 2001. Like an elaborate game of telephone, everyone had a slightly different take upon learning the identity of Sarahs biological father. She had five kids, commuted to work and yet she slept so little. "Stories We Tell" is about Sarah Polley's family - in particular about her mother - Diane - who died of cancer on January 10, 1990 when Sarah was eleven years old. The author Margaret Atwood, a longtime friend who also read drafts of Run Towards the Danger, said that she has seen Polley strive for greater honesty in her work and in her life. She was previously married to Michael Polley and George Deans-Buchan. Characterising a parent is an odd business because it involves detaching from the early, unquestioning relationship and, on one level, becoming your parent's parent in the process. "The result here is a more intricate self-portrait, since Diane's affairwhich Polley's search unearths and She served as a member of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival jury.[27]. It is the remembering that matters. [24], Polley appeared as Lily on the CBC television series Straight Up. 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. This is a fantastic moment in the film (no reconstruction involved). It was really interesting to have a big drama in your own life, and have this need to make it into narrative.. To update your cookie settings, please visit the Cookie Preference Center for this site. She has a transparent complexion and guileless smile. But I made the film to have agency in how the story was going to be told. Documentaries dont usually require spoiler alerts. 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. And my biological father was also writing about it. Is there such a thing as emotional copyright? 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. That was such a relief, said Polley, whose next project is adapting Margaret Atwoods Alias Grace. This was something that compelled me. A tiny figure, with a tentative tread, appears on the pavement opposite. After her death, "suddenly there was myself and this little girl. Disney executives asked her to remove it, and she refused. And Polley believes: "We blame relationships for that gap. [8][9], Her mother was an actress (best known for playing Gloria Beechham in 44 episodes of the Canadian TV series Street Legal) and a casting director. Privacy PolicyTerms and ConditionsAccessibility, To read this article in full you will need to make a payment. That essays written by four different people, she said. During the making of the film, her sisters also divorced their spouses.) She suffered headaches and nausea, brought on by everyday levels of light and sound. [3] She first garnered attention as a child actress for her role as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books. 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. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements involving sexuality, brief strong language and smoking. She orders brunch ("two eggs over easy with bacon and HP sauce"). I think its a lot to absorb and kinda difficult.. 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. One shop promises to waylay passers by and teach them how to knit. [22] The show ran until 1996; Polley did return as Sara Stanley for an episode in 1995 and for the series finale. 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. Meanwhile she divorced, remarried, raised a mutant child in the sci-fi horror film Splice, portrayed a depressed mother in Mr. Nobody, directed Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen in Take This Waltz, and had a baby. 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. At least that was her story. [13] Gulkin's paternity was later confirmed by a DNA test. George Bernard Shaw wrote: "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." The officiator just said: never mind." 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). Memory is not a convenient barn in which truth can be stored through successive winters. We break the ice not that there is much to break with talk of Toronto. 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. Signup for our newsletter to get notified about our next ride. There is a memorable line from Take This Waltz that goes: "Life has a gap in it, it just does." He said he was. The youngest of five children born to actress Diane Polley, Sarah learned that she was the product of an affair her mother had with a Montreal movie producera secret Diane took to her grave when she died of cancer just after Sarahs 11th birthday. 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. Her son Mark Polley is also an actor.[2]. In the same year, she starred in a lead role in the remake of Dawn of the Dead, which was a departure from her other indie roles. Two days after her 11th birthday, Sarah Polley lost her mother to cancer. Sarah Polley, center, was 8 when she played Sally Salt in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen., Columbia Pictures, via Everett Collection, Polley in a scene from her 2012 documentary Stories We Tell., I thrive on too-intimate conversations with people, Polley said. And, looking back, Sarah acknowledges that "taking care of me became the centre of his life". [7] In 2022 she wrote and directed the film Women Talking earning her second Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay nomination. So does she see marriage as a doomed enterprise? The disease was already at stage IV, the most advanced, and had spread to his lymph. 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? [7] Polley first wrote to Atwood asking to adapt the novel when she was 17. It was so strange, to have to completely reimagine where you biologically come from.. Her first appearance on screen was at the age of four,[20] as Molly in the film One Magic Christmas. "At 15, I exaggerated constantly," she laughs. 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. [57], In January 2012, Polley endorsed Toronto MP Peggy Nash in the 2012 New Democratic Party leadership race to succeed Jack Layton. When I found it, I thought, Oh, my God, I get to watch this, watch her face. It makes you nuts, said Polley, who said she would be content never to see the movie again. even paint the same portrait of Diane Polley. 34 year old Sarah tells of how the news started many family conversations at the dinner table and she noted how everyones story was different with each family member highlighting a different aspect of the tale. Now Sarah has given him one. Shes an artist, he said. Her father, Michael, is a transplanted British actor; her mother, Diane, was an actress and casting director. For the next five years, Polley dived deep into her family history, weaving footage from home Super 8 movies and old photographs with confessional interviews from brothers John Buchan and Mark Polley, sisters Susy Buchan and Joanna Polley, plus Michael Polley and her biological father, among others. I can imagine because I feel a similarly relaxed freedom talking to Sarah. I think its a lot to absorb and kinda difficult.. "[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. 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.