Things are looking up for Canadian
Things are looking up for Canadian actress who’s become a rising star on TV and in film
Mackenzie Davis is riding a rocket to superstardom.
The Vancouver-bred 29-year-old actress is having her best year yet following a stellar performance in The Martian as NASA satellite communications engineer Mindy Park, and things are only looking up.
The third season of AMC’s hit series Halt and Catch Fire, in which Davis plays renegade programmer Cameron Howe, kicked off this week.
Davis is also being lauded for her breakout performance in Always Shine, a psychological thriller in which she stars alongside Caitlin Fitzgerald that tells the story of two competitive friends attempting to reconnect during a weekend trip to Big Sur, Calif. The film premiered at the Tribeca Festival in April, and is expected to hit North American screens later this year.
To top things off, when reached for a chat Davis was in Budapest, working with Quebec director Denis Villeneuve (Sicario, Prisoners and forthcoming sci-fi film Arrival) on the sequel to director Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic Blade Runner.
“It’s been my favourite movie for as long as I can remember,” Davis said of the original starring Harrison Ford, Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer. “I can’t believe I get to be a part of it. (Villeneuve’s) enthusiasm and love for it has made the whole thing so exciting.
“And it’s a sort of Trojan horse Canadian production — there’s Ryan (Gosling) and there’s Denis, and the wardrobe designers and the hair and makeup team. Everywhere you look there’s another Canadian, which is certainly not my experience on those productions.”
Of course, as soon as questions concerning the nature of the plot arise (is Davis a replicant, à la Daryl Hannah?), the answer is a polite, “Actually, I can’t tell you a single thing. Sorry.”
Which is fair. Blade Runner 2 is bound to be one of the most secretly guarded plots in sci-fi film history.
Scott, who is producing the movie, was obviously well aware of Davis’s talent, having worked with her on The Martian. Davis said she first met with Villeneuve in Montreal in October last year.
Ironically, Davis had been dreaming of a sequel for much longer than Scott.
“I had friends from university who called me when the news first came out saying, ‘It’s so crazy, you had been talking about this when we were 19 that if ever a Blade Runner sequel came out it would be your dream job.’ And then it happened. It’s truly insane to me.”
Davis left Vancouver to study English literature at McGill University in Montreal when she was 18. Her dream was always acting and performing, she said.
“It was always my intention to pursue it as a career. But it was important for my parents that I go to university first before moving to New York, and I’m so grateful that they forced me to do it. I did plays (at McGill) — one or two a year, nothing crazy. And then I got into this amazing acting workshop in Montreal with Jacqueline McClintock (who also taught Mad Men’s Jessica Pare and coached director Atom Egoyan) — a lot of really lovely writers and people went to this (Sanford) Meisner-based acting class. She was such an important mentor to me at that time.”
McClintock, who died in 2012, also inspired Davis to attend New York City’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre, where McClintock had also studied.
“I spent two years there, and started working after that.”
It didn’t take long for Davis to leave a mark. Instead of scrounging for small parts in indie movies, Davis landed her first film role acting alongside Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul, Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally in the drama Smashed in 2012.
In 2013, she was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for best actress in a supporting role for her performance in The F Word.
Her role as Cameron Howe in Halt and Catch Fire, a show set during the PC boom of the early ’80s and is a bit like Mad Men meets Silicon Valley, showcases a geeky, rebellious streak that was also evident in her role in The Martian.
The range of roles offered to Davis is certainly expanding. Thriller Always Shine will show her more transformative side, playing with the two main characters’ idea of acting versus being.
“The role of an actress is this heightened version of femininity, with pageantry a lot of the time: You get dressed up and paraded about. You’re being rewarded for being exquisitely beautiful. There’s so much of being a woman that’s crystallized in being an actress. (Always Shine) is really about how those feelings can lay seeds and grow and cause someone to go crazy, almost: The idea of constantly being not enough of a thing that is intangible will make you lose your mind.”
And then there’s Tully, a film written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman that will bring Davis back home to shoot in Vancouver with Charlize Theron once Blade Runner 2 wraps. Davis will play the titular role of a night nurse assisting Theron’s character Marlo, a mother of three children, with whom she ends up forming a bond.
“It’s about this bizarre relationship you have with someone who’s a complete stranger and comes in your house in the middle of the night and takes care of your newborn child and engages with you in the most intimate, personal way,” Davis said, adding it would be a lighthearted “dramedy” rather than another Hand That Rocks the Cradle, which she called “a very harrowing movie for me growing up.”
It was always my intention to pursue (acting) as a career. But it was important for my parents that I go to university first.