“It is not in my nature to enjoy a red carpet or a photo call.”
Spoken by any other actress, this might be hard to believe, but Sarah Gadon isn’t your average artist. After taking roles in esteemed director David Cronenberg's latest two films — A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis — the 26-year-old was quickly dubbed one to watch, recognized as a TIFF Rising Star and featured on a number of magazine covers and in fashion editorials.
This, however, is not what drives her. Currently in Belfast filming Dracula Untold, her next feature, we speak with Gadon about the pressures faced by young women in the spotlight, her focus on her work and how the homebody reboots in North Toronto.
It soon becomes clear Gadon is wise beyond her 26 years, being sharp, passionate and talented to boot, which helps to explain why she’s been noted so swiftly. The petite, flaxen-haired thespian got her start in the entertainment business at the age of 10, working on TV series La Femme Nikita.
As with many Canadian actors, she forged her career in television, steadily gaining recognition by taking bit parts in the likes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? and This Is Wonderland, while also doing voice work. Through 2008 to 2011, the young actress landed recurring parts on three prime-time CBC shows: dramas The Border and Murdoch Mysteries along with the cultish Being Erica.
But the young actress wasn’t only catching the eye of those in Canadian television. In 2011, Cronenberg cast her alongside Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method, his period piece about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Since then, her career has taken off — premieres in Cannes, Venice and San Sebastian, working with Jake Gyllenhaal in Enemy, Robert Pattinson (twice!) and, most recently, Julianne Moore.
But when asked about it, Gadon remains level-headed: “I guess from the outside it may seem like a ‘rapid ascension,’ but for me, it feels just like I’ve been steadily working for the past four years.”
And she has been. In addition to her acting, she is balancing being a student at University of Toronto in the cinema studies department, which has shaped her career (she’s currently taking a semester off to film).
“Sometimes I wonder if my theory background has made me too dogmatic in my approach to my craft,” Gadon notes. “But then again, I don’t think I would be where I am today if I didn’t believe in things like auteur theory.”
Such humble responses might be construed as false modesty, but with Gadon it suggests a driven quality and focused intensity. “I think when you are ambitious, you continually set goals for yourself,” she says. “And when you achieve them, they can seem marginal because you are always trying to move forward.”
Throughout her rise, Gadon has displayed a profound professionalism, a characteristic that she best expressed at the 2012 Cannes International Film Festival when she quipped: “I’ve been turning into a pumpkin at midnight. I haven’t wandered onto anyone’s yacht.”
In an age when celebrity is synonymous with overexposure and extra-cinematic escapades, such a statement comes as a refreshing change. Yet for Gadon, it is not just a question of privacy, but something far more complex.
“I try to avoid the media in my off time,” she says. “Mostly because I feel uncomfortable being a body on display.”
Indeed, Gadon is intensely aware of how media representations can affect the realities of young women. “Growing up,” she says, “I would always buy fashion magazines to read about the actresses on the covers, but inevitably the articles on the inside would feature little about their work and more about their beauty routine or fashion preferences. I always found this frustrating, that women in film had such a narrow outlet to discuss their work. I think about it often as I do press — I try to emphasize my work and untie it from a strictly visual representation of myself.”
In 2012, Gadon addressed our culture’s warped infatuation with celebrity and image when she played a doomed superstar in Brandon Cronenberg’s (a.k.a. Cronenberg Junior) Antiviral. Casting her in the already twisted film made it all the more perfectly perverse: would the up-and-coming star share the fate of her character and be similarly destroyed by our relentless fascination with stardom? It goes without saying that the answer is no.
“Sarah is fantastically talented and a pleasure to work with,” notes Brandon Cronenberg. “Her approach to the character was great from the start, which made my job very easy.”
Currently, Gadon has no shortage of upcoming projects. Next year, she will see her blockbuster debut in Marc Webb’s highly anticipated The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There, the actress will share the screen with a roster of boldfaced names: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Jamie Foxx and Paul Giamatti. However, when asked if she could discuss this role, her simple answer evoked a mountain of non-disclosure agreements: “No.”
Currently, she is filming Dracula Untold, which she describes as “a perfect balance between a Gladiator-style action film and a classic love story.”
This year at TIFF — a festival that she credits with having helped her “grow into an international artist” — she had two films: Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy and Amma Asante’s costume drama Belle. (“I had been itching to work with a strong female director,” she says of Belle, but concedes the long days in corsets was a drag.)
Gadon also just wrapped Maps to the Stars, her third project with David Cronenberg where, along with Julianne Moore, she will be seen with Mia Wasikowska and John Cusack and be reunited with Pattinson, her co-star in Cosmopolis.
When talking about Cronenberg, Gadon’s modesty is evident again: “I feel privileged every time I am asked to work on one of his films.” Although working with the revered Canadian director “has quite simply changed [her] life,” some things have remained the same.
At the end of the day, Gadon is quick to call herself “a homebody,” declaring: “I ache for Toronto when I’m not home.” Missing the likes of Dark Horse coffee, the farmers’ market at Wychwood Barns and Pilates at Misfit Studio, Gadon also loves returning to her North Toronto stomping grounds. Describing visiting her parents after a long trip, she waxes nostalgic about weekend mornings that involve eating “Gryfe’s bagels, Kristapsons smoked salmon, with Pusateri’s whipped cream cheese,” while watching the arts show CBS Sunday Morning and poring over the Sunday New York Times.
Even with all the glamour, gowns and red carpets, Gadon’s greatest pleasures remain simple: “It’s my favourite thing in the world … lazy Sundays with my family in North Toronto.”
