Sarah Ellen Polley was born on January 8, 1979 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,[7][8] the youngest of five children born to Diane Elizabeth Polley (née MacMillan). Her siblings are Susy and John Buchan from Diane's first marriage to George Deans-Buchan, and Mark and Joanna Polley from her second marriage to Michael Polley (1933–2018), a British-born actor who became an insurance agent after starting a family with Diane.[9][10]
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. She died of cancer the week of Polley's 11th birthday in 1990.[11]
Polley suffered from severe scoliosis as a child and underwent a spinal operation at 15 that required her to spend the next year in bed recovering.[12]
Polley was raised by Diane and Michael.[13] During her childhood, Polley's siblings teased her because she bore no physical resemblance to Michael. 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).[14][15] Gulkin, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was a Quebec-born film producer who produced the 1975 Canadian film Lies My Father Told Me, and had met Diane after attending a play in which she acted in Montreal in 1978.[15][16][17][18] When Polley turned 18, she decided to follow up on suggestions from her mother's friends that her biological father might be Geoff Bowes—one of three castmates from her mother's play in Montreal.[14] Meeting with Gulkin as just someone who could provide information about Diane in Montreal, he informed Polley of his affair with Diane.[14] Gulkin's paternity was later confirmed by a DNA test.[19][20]
Her first appearance on screen was at the age of four,[22] as Molly in the film One Magic Christmas. She was in the pilot episode for Friday the 13th – The Series and appeared in a small role in William Fruet's sci-fi horror film Blue Monkey, both in 1987. At age of eight, she was cast as Ramona Quimby in the television series Ramona, based on Beverly Cleary's books.
That same year, she played one of the lead characters in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Polley burst into the public eye in 1990 as Sara Stanley on the popular CBC television series Road to Avonlea. The series made her famous and financially independent, and she was hailed as "Canada's Sweetheart" by the popular press.[23] The show was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the United States. At the age of 12 (around 1991), Polley attended an awards ceremony while wearing a peace sign to protest the first Gulf War. Disney executives asked her to remove it, and she refused. This soured her relationship with Disney, but she continued on Road to Avonlea until 1994.[24] The show ran until 1996; Polley did return as Sara Stanley for an episode in 1995 and for the series finale.
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.[25] Polley ended her run early, claiming complications from scoliosis. In 2022 she revealed she had in fact been suffering from intense stage fright, something that continued to plague her into adulthood.[26]
Adult acting
Polley appeared as Lily on the CBC television series Straight Up, which ran from 1996 to 1998, winning the Gemini Award for Best Performance in a Children's or Youth Program or Series for her role. By age thirteen, however, Polley was dissatisfied with her juvenile acting career. Her experience with director Atom Egoyan in a small but critical role in his sophisticated adult drama Exotica turned things around, as she revealed in a 2022 conversation with the director, filmed for Criterion's Exotica BluRay. Polley's subsequent role as Nicole Burnell in Egoyan's 1997 film The Sweet Hereafter brought her considerable attention in the United States; she was a favourite at the Sundance Film Festival. Her character in the film was an aspiring singer, and on the film's soundtrack, she performed covers of The Tragically Hip's "Courage" and Jane Siberry's "One More Colour" and sang the film's title track, which she co-wrote with Mychael Danna.[27]
In 2006, Polley took a role on the acclaimed series Slings and Arrows during its third and final season. Polley's father, Michael Polley, was a regular on the show during its entire three-season run. She served as a member of the 2007 Cannes Film Festival jury.[29]
Though Polley never officially announced her retirement from acting, she has not taken an acting role since 2010, transitioning into a writing and directing career.
In late 2012, Polley announced that she would be adapting Margaret Atwood's novel Alias Grace.[5] Polley first wrote to Atwood asking to adapt the novel when she was 17. They held off for 20 years until she was ready to make the show.[34] 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.[35] In June 2016, the series was confirmed with Polley writing and producing. The series premiered in 2017 on CBC Television in Canada; it streams on Netflix globally, outside of Canada.[36] It received positive reviews from critics.[4]
In June 2014, it was announced that Polley would write and direct an adaptation of John Green's Looking for Alaska.[37] In March 2015, she was hired to potentially write and direct a new adaptation of Little Women.[38] Her involvement in the project ultimately never went beyond initial discussion.[39] In her 2022 essay collection Run Towards the Danger, Polley revealed she had been working on a second draft of the Little Women screenplay when she had a traumatic head injury resulting in post-concussion syndrome that left her with symptoms for four years so she was temporarily unable to work until she found effective treatment through University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's concussion program. It was subsequently announced in June that, due to scheduling conflicts, Polley would no longer be directing Looking for Alaska.[40][41]
In an interview, Polley stated that she takes pride in her work and enjoys both acting and directing, but is not keen on combining the two:
I like the feeling of keeping them separate. I find that really gratifying. I can't imagine combining those. For me, I love the feeling of using different parts of my brain separately.[42]
In 2023, Polley was revealed to be in talks to direct Disney'slive action adaptation of Bambi, but in March 2024, it never came in fruition due to reportedly no longer attached as a director.[50][51]
Writing
Polley has written numerous essays over the years about her experiences as a child star. In 2022, she released her first book of essays, the autobiographical, Run Towards the Danger which contains six essays that examine aspects of Polley's career on stage, screen, and on film, detailing her roles in a Stratford Festival production of Alice Through the Looking Glass, as well as her breakout roles in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the TV series Road to Avonlea. The book also revealed for the first time that Polley had been a victim of Jian Ghomeshi who sexually and physically assaulted her when she was 16 and he was 28.[52]
Political and social activism
Polley in 2009
Following the row with Disney as a twelve-year-old for wearing a peace sign to protest against the Gulf War, Polley dedicated more of her efforts to politics, becoming a prominent member of the Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP), where Ontario legislator Peter Kormos was her political mentor. 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".[53]
In 2009, Polley directed a two-minute short film in support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. 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,[56][57][58] Polley withdrew her association with the film. "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. 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. However, I have since learned that my film is also being used to promote a product. Regretfully, I am forced to remove my name from the film and disassociate myself from it. I have never actively promoted any corporate brand, and cannot do so now."[59][60][61] In response, Becel said it was a "founding sponsor" of the Heart Truth campaign and had commissioned the film "to put heart health on the radar of Canadian women".[62]
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.[64]
Personal life
In 2007, Polley discovered the man who raised her, Michael Polley, was not her biological father. The story of her mother's affair with her biological father, producer Harry Gulkin, was chronicled in her 2012 film, Stories We Tell.[14]
On September 10, 2003, Polley married Canadian film editor David Wharnsby, her boyfriend of seven years. They divorced in 2008.[65] On August 23, 2011, she married David Sandomierski. They have three children.[66][67]
In her 2022 autobiographical essay collection, Run Towards the Danger, Polley said she was sexually assaulted by Moxy Früvous singer Jian Ghomeshi on a 1995 date, while she was 16 and he was 28. Family and friends dissuaded her from coming forward.[68][69]
On October 16, 2010, it was announced that Polley would receive a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.[71] 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.[72] She was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada on December 30, 2013.[73]
^"When asked what directors she admires, Polley talks about Ingmar Bergman and Terrence Malick (she says his Thin Red Line "single-handedly brought me out of a deep depression. It shifted something in me. I'm an atheist, but it was the first time that it gave me faith in other people's faith")." Woman on the VergeArchived February 16, 2012, at the Wayback Machine by Mark Pupo, Toronto Life Magazine, October 2006.
Canadian Film Awards 1968–1978, Genie Awards 1980-2011, Canadian Screen Awards 2012–present. Separate awards were presented by gender prior to 2022; a single unified category for best performance regardless of gender has been presented since.
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