ACTING WAS MASLANY’S PASSION AT EARLY AGE
Regina actress wins award
Growing up in Regina, Tatiana Maslany experienced the wonder of performing. Now it’s her passion — but the award-winning actress performs on a much larger stage.
A member of the drama program at Dr. Martin LeBoldus High School, Maslany loved performing studentwritten plays and excelled at improvisational theatre.
“It was a great school because it was so arts focused and we got to compete at the national Improv Games — it was just a great way to perform,” said the 27-year-old in a phone interview from Toronto on Saturday.
Maslany’s exposure to musical theatre began when she started dancing at four. She performed with a number of local dance groups including The Do It With Class Young People’s Theatre and honed her acting skills as a member of the General Fools Improvisational Theatre.
Since leaving Regina about seven years ago, the Torontonian has performed on stage and screen and received numerous awards for her work.
Most recently, Maslany was acclaimed for her role in Picture Day at the Whistler Film Festival. On Dec. 2, she won the festival’s newest award, “Best Performance in a Borsos Film” — named after legendary Canadian filmmaker Phillip Borsos.
The former Reginan plays Claire — a rebellious teenager who is caught in the turbulence that often accompanies the transition from adolescence to adulthood and is forced to repeat her senior year of high school. Maslany easily related to the teen’s angst.
“She’s stuck in that place of not quite being a kid and not being an adult yet,” she said. “That’s what I really like about the part because I feel that’s something people can relate to at any age — we all get into stages where we’re stuck before we move on to something bigger.”
But Maslany couldn’t draw on life experience when portraying Claire’s rebellious nature.
“I was super dorky,” Maslany said laughing. “The one thing I did was acting and that was my passion at a young age, so I missed out on the rebellion you go through as a teen because I was kind of working at that age ... I was kind of disconnected from the teen experience.”
Picture Day, written and directed by Kate Melville of Toronto, won the Borsos award for Best Canadian Feature Film.
Melville was quoted as saying: “Tatiana Maslany is a true Canadian talent, one who brings everything she has to the screen. She is a smart and intuitive and agile performer and I’m delighted the Borsos jury recognized her extraordinary work in Picture Day.”
Others have recognized Maslany’s star qualities.
Her role in Grown Up Movie Star earned her a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 and a Genie nomination in 2011.
Her long list of achievements also include a Gemini Award in 2009 for the best performance by an actress in a guest role in the dramatic Canadian television series Flashpoint.
So what’s next on her career wish list?
“I just want to keep doing cool, character-based projects,” Maslany said. “I’m working on a series right now that I’m really in love with called Orphan Black. It is bold and nothing like I’ve ever seen on television. It has really great writing and really great actors.”
The down-to-earth actress doesn’t mention she has a starring role in Orphan Black, BBC America’s new series that is to come out at the end of March.
During time off over Christmas, she will reunite in Hawaii with a group of family and friends that include her Regina parents, Danny and Renate Maslany, and her brothers, Daniel and Michael.
“I get to Regina at least once a year if not a couple of times, but it’s tough because I’m pretty busy working and flying to Regina is actually more expensive than flying to London,” Maslany said. “It’s nuts!”
To young aspiring actresses, Maslany offers these words of advice: “Don’t compromise yourself ever. It’s a really difficult industry for women, especially young girls. It’s really about knowing what kind of art you want to make, what kind of stories you want to tell.”