Young Canadian stars praised in Variety magazine youth issue
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. — The Great White North continues to leave a small but indelible footprint on Hollywood’s walk of fame and, in some cases, misfortune.
The current Power of Youth issue of Variety, an entertainment trade magazine founded in 1905, features a number of Canadian names and faces.
The expanded issue is dedicated to the impact some of Hollywood’s young people are having on the real world, outside the dayto-day routine of studio filming, photo ops and redcarpet walks.
Among the Canadians to warrant a mention, perhaps no one is more prominent than Nina Dobrev, the Bulgaria-born, Torontoraised actor who started her career as teenage single mother Mia Jones in Degrassi: The Next Generation and came to fame as Elena Gilbert in the longrunning teen drama The Vampire Diaries.
The youth advocacy charity Free the Children placed a full-page ad congratulating Dobrev, 24, for a Power of Youth Award, bestowed in part for her efforts on behalf of Free the Children and for hosting We Day, Free the Children’s youth empowerment event.
In a separate, full-page profile, Dobrev was cited for engaging First World youth to be ambassadors for change on behalf of less fortunate children abroad, in emerging nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Dobrev noted the charity has built more than 600 schools and classrooms in countries around the world, but added, “There’s still so much to do. We’re … so lucky in America and often don’t even realize it.”
Dobrev has been working with the Canadian-based agency since 2007, when she was still in her teens. For her first mission, she helped build a school and install a freshwater drinking well in a village in Kenya, and helped teach in the local school — a trip, she said later, “that forever changed me, affected my life.”
Dobrev found that when she talked to friends about it, it created a domino effect which inspired others.
“I love their whole concept of kids helping kids,” Dobrev told Variety. “The program really encourages young people to travel to different countries and actually physically do something and meet the kids, as opposed to just donating money and hoping it gets to the source.”
The same issue also lauds child actors Maisy and Lennon Stella, progeny of the Whitby, Ont. country group The Stellas.
Robin, 13, and Stella, nine, play Connie Britton’s children on the Emmy-nominated drama Nashville.
Veteran Vancouver cameraman Rob McLachlan is cited in a two-page ad placed by HBO in recognition of HBO’s 110 Emmy nominations.
McLachlan, 56, has been nominated for outstanding cinematography, for Game of Thrones’ season finale, Mhysa.
McLachlan’s nomination is one of 17 for Game of Thrones.
Of the full-page ads in the commemorative Power of Youth issue, none is more poignant perhaps than the simple, stark full-page testimonial to Cory Monteith.
Monteith, who died in Vancouver July 13 of what the coroner’s report described as “a mixed drug toxicity,” is shown in blackand-white, leaning against leather scaffolding, hands in pockets and smiling shyly, with the simple caption, “Cory Monteith … In our hearts forever.”
The testimonial ad was commissioned by the Fox Broadcasting Company, which produces the TV show Glee, in which Monteith came to fame as Finn Hudson, a star high-school athlete with a growing talent for song and dance.
Glee will return Sept. 26, a week later than originally announced, with a longplanned two-part Beatles tribute.
Co-creator and executive producer Ryan Murphy confirmed to E! and The Hollywood Reporter that Glee will pay tribute to Monteith in the season’s third episode, to air Oct. 10.
The show will then take an extended break and return at a yet-to-be determined date.
Murphy ruled out recasting Monteith’s role with another actor.
“The right thing to do for the show, at least at this point, is to have that character pass,” Murphy told The Hollywood Reporter.