ACTRESS IN PRIME TIME
Snaden lands plum TV job
Talk about a whirlwind rise: Windsor’s Alice Snaden had barely stepped out of theatre school when she landed a recurring TV gig.
In her first audition after graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal, a week after moving to Toronto to follow her dreams, the London, Ont., native who grew up in Windsor landed a role on the Alias Grace miniseries, which started on CBC Monday night.
“It was wild,” the 22-year-old actor said Tuesday, about her almost instant launch into professional television. “I didn’t expect to dive into film and television so quickly, because I was born and bred a theatre performer.”
Her parents, Mitch and Janet, are veteran community theatre performers, including roles at the St. Clair Centre for the Arts next month with Windsor Light Music Theatre’s Mamma Mia!
“You can never necessarily plot out this career because it surprises you in so many ways,” Snaden said. “But it’s been a remarkable time.”
Snaden actually trained in ballet as a young girl. But she didn’t get the breaks she hoped for, and found herself drawn to acting.
The three-year National Theatre School conservatory prepared her for performing, but also for what sounded like a difficult time breaking in. It turned out to be a snap, though that doesn’t guarantee anything for the future.
After landing the Alias Grace role — and before she actually started filming it — Snaden also found one-time parts in the Murdoch Mysteries and Saving Hope television series. She has also appeared in Sheets at the Theatre Centre in Toronto, and performed in workshops in Stratford and currently with the Soulpepper theatre troupe in Toronto.
She has even turned down potential jobs. She received a callback for a violent slasher film that she decided was not up her alley.
“You have to start making choices,” Snaden said. “Sometimes it’s just as much what you say no to as the things you say yes to that will shape your career.
“But it was hard as a young actor — especially one who is just emerging — to say no. It’s scary. You think if you say no you’ll never work again. But so far it’s OK.”
Her breakout role came via Lydia, the governor’s daughter in Alias Grace, based on the Giller-winning novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. Sarah Polley created the miniseries, which airs on CBC Monday’s at 9 p.m. for six weeks.
Though the show feels dark, Snaden adds some levity. Her character falls in love with the good doctor Simon Jordan (played by Edward Holcraft) — investigating whether lead character Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon) actually committed the murder for which she was convicted.
“People ask me, ‘Was it hard to put yourself in the role?’” Snaden said. “Well, the man I fall in love with is quite beautiful and very kind, so that one was pretty easy.”
Still, she took a serious approach to her light-hearted turn as Lydia.
“I could have played her in an airy way,” she said. “It could have been the stereotypical ditzy girl. But I invested in the character really falling in love. I truly believed as a character that every moment I saw him would be the moment he fell in love with me. And then every moment he didn’t.”
Total immersion might not have worked out well for Lydia, but it did for Snaden: “As an actor, I pretty much fall very deeply into the characters.”