{"id":4235,"date":"2013-10-16T16:16:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T20:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=4235"},"modified":"2013-10-30T17:31:18","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T21:31:18","slug":"tiffs-rising-star-brings-some-balls-to-her-roles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/tiffs-rising-star-brings-some-balls-to-her-roles\/","title":{"rendered":"TIFF\u2019s Rising Star brings some \u201cballs\u201d to her roles"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

As an actress, Cara Gee often dreamt of walking the red carpet on the way into a premiere.<\/p>\n

In her starring turn in \u201cEmpire of Dirt\u201d, she had the chance to do just that, as it bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where Ms. Gee was also named one of four \u201cRising Stars\u201d.<\/p>\n

TIFF\u2019s Rising Star program selects just a few applicants each year for a professional \u201cboot camp\u201d meeting with producers, casting directors, and making connections early on their road to stardom. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe program is exceptional and the opportunity of a lifetime,\u201d says Ms. Gee. \u201cWe had meetings all day long with different producers, directors, writers, and casting directors \u2013 and it would take you potentially years to meet all these people out working. It was a real inside scoop and to have real conversations with these incredible people in the industry was just amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Empire of Dirt, Ms. Gee plays Lena, a single mom, who had her baby as a teen and runs away from her community to Toronto. She\u2019s had a \u201cpretty tough go at it\u201d, says Ms. Gee, of the Aboriginal character who, at 16 years old, was living on the streets of Toronto, baby on her hip, but no resources.
\n\u201cThe film takes off when they hit rock bottom,\u201d she says. \u201cNow she has a teenage daughter and they have nowhere to go but the home she ran away from. I\u2019m now introducing my mother to my daughter for the first time and it is a real family drama. How do you figure out how to be a family?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Gee shares little else with Lena but Aboriginal heritage; nevertheless, she says one can\u2019t help draw upon personal experiences to bring stories like Lena\u2019s to life. One key point of contrast: Ms. Gee describes her mother as her \u201cvery best friend in the whole world.\u201d Therefore lacking on personal experience dealing with a cold and distant figure like Lena\u2019s mother, she imagined what her world would be like if her own mother wasn\u2019t part of her life. <\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t imagine not having that relationship,\u201d she says. \u201cTo go into a world of these characters where they have been so badly damaged, how do you learn to be a good mom? Where do you learn that from if you haven\u2019t had a good mom? In that way, I was very much drawing on my own experiences having the best mom ever, and I am very lucky for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Gee now lives in Toronto, but when Empire of Dirt\u2019s producers took their production on the road, she returned to her parents\u2019 Aurora home and made it her base as they filmed in Keswick, Innisfil and Sunderland. <\/p>\n

Gee was first bitten with the acting bug as a student at Newmarket\u2019s Huron Heights Secondary School where, rather than experiencing a drama class full of mundane activities, she was inspired by drama teacher Michael Halfin\u2019s passion for the craft. It was university level work, she says, and the serious dedication to the craft was something she never previously considered. It is now, however, second nature. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I love about it is you can draw on every single aspect of your life,\u201d she says. \u201cEvery single aspect of your life is valuable. I am very social by nature and I think people are fascinating. The world would be a better place if we had more empathy and care for one another. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think my way of contributing is to hopefully tell stories and tell them well so people can get to know a little bit more of what it is like to be somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one of TIFF\u2019s Rising Star, hundreds of people from around the world had a chance to see her interpretations first hand. Finally having her chance to walk the red carpet, she said her visions of the red carpet as a glamorous way to enter the theatre were slightly dashed when she realised it was a little bit of a \u201csetup\u201d, but no less special.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very wild and like a blur in a lot of ways,\u201d she says of her TIFF experience, which soon helped her reap some immediate rewards. \u201cWe were programmed from very early morning and then we had screenings and a million parties afterwards. It was a phenomenal experience. It is one thing to see your agenda on paper and another to actually live it. I was told it was a whirlwind, so it is one thing to hear it but another to experience it.
\n\u201cIt is a complete and total launch pad. I found out halfway through TIFF that I was offered a role on the Republic of Doyle so I actually flew out on the last day of TIFF to Newfoundland. That was some next level career stuff going on there! What an honour.\u201d<\/p>\n

The role on Republic of Doyle was originally written for a man, but casting directors clearly decided to take things in another direction. With that episode in the can, she is now working on a couple of short films with director Norman Young. The one underway right now is called \u201cAnne Darling\u201d, in which she plays a role also originally written for a man. An addition, her dream role is to play Iago, the villain in Othello. <\/p>\n

\u201cThese roles are neat spaces to inhabit \u2013 and bring some balls into it!\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir As an actress, Cara Gee often dreamt of walking the red carpet on the way into a premiere. In her starring turn in \u201cEmpire of Dirt\u201d, she had the chance to do just that, as it bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) where Ms. Gee was also named one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/2013-10-16-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-16j","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-10 16:57:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}