“Sixteenth-century Machiavellian murderers” sounds more like a Jeopardy category than a conversation starter, yet it’s the mention of Lucrezia Borgia that sets the 30-year-old Genie- nominated star of One Week, The Trotsky and New Waterford Girl giggling.
Balaban, you see, provides the voice of the medieval madwoman in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, the best-selling hack-and-slash video game.
“My dream role was to play a villain and Lucrezia Borgia is the ultimate villain,” says Balaban gleefully.
Balaban recently spoke to a group of high school students as part of the Reel Canada initiative to bring film appreciation into the classroom.
She had grand aspirations of inspiring a generation of future thespians with her stories of starring alongside Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson and Julianne Moore, or at least enthralling them with tales of sharing the screen with hunky heartthrobs like Joshua Jackson and Ryan Reynolds.
“I thought it might be like Mr. Holland’s Opus where I come in and inspire the students and change their lives with my stories, but when they found out about Assassin’s Creed, that was probably the most impressive thing to them,” she says, feigning a bruised ego before bursting out laughing.
Balaban laughs a lot between bites of leftover pasta with chicken and meatballs that she made herself.
She’s in the kitchen beneath the Canadian Stage Company, where she is rehearsing Divisadero: a performance, Michael Ondaatje’s adaptation of his Governor General’s Award-winning novel. Directed by Necessary Angels theatre director Daniel Brooks and co-starring Maggie Huculak, Tom McCamus, Amy Rutherford and Juno-nominated musician Justin Rutledge, Divisadero runs Feb. 8 to 20 at Theatre Passe Muraille.
The play, like the novel, tells the story of a family whose lives are changed by a single violent event, and it explores themes of memory, identity, love and the way the past maintains a grip on the present.
Balaban plays Claire, the adopted daughter of a farmer, whose other daughter has an affair with a farmhand who ends up a Vegas gambler. But the story “doesn’t follow conventional narrative lines like a film does,” Balaban says, as it combines music, performance and storytelling to create a mood and atmosphere and “hopefully a very strong connection with the audience.”
“I am not necessarily embodying the character. As much as Claire the character is present, I feel that Liane the actress is also present in the telling,” she says. “It’s not a question of losing myself in the character or the story — it’s about treading the line between reality and imagination, which is something that will be useful for future film roles.”
Primarily a film and television actress who has been dividing her time between Montreal and L.A., Balaban has had a string of guest- starring roles on hit American series like NCIS: Los Angeles, Numbers and Covert Affairs (which begins airing in Canada this month) in-between small independent films like The Trotsky and Last Chance Harvey. In fact, her role in the Ryan Reynolds rom- com Definitely, Maybe is responsible for her appearing in Divisadero.
Definitely, Maybe director Adam Brooks is the brother of Divisadero director Daniel Brooks. “Adam had been saying to Daniel that he should meet this actress f rom Toronto and one weekend I was in New York working and I had lunch with Adam when Daniel called looking for me,” she says. “I came to Toronto, we met and he asked me to workshop this play and now we’re actually doing it.”
Of course, working in film and theatre are “two very different animals,” she says. “I really love how thorough you can be in theatre. I love the aspect of time and process that you have in the rehearsal process. Most of the film projects I’ve worked on have been so underfunded and rushed that there is no time for that kind of thinking and preparation.”
Theatre also emphasizes details in an actor’s performance to a much greater degree, Balaban has learned. “In theatre there is room to discuss ideas, for every gesture to have meaning,” she explains. “In film, you analyze it after; you have an editor who can create that meaning for you later. It’s not as methodical all the time.”
The result, she says, is that in many ways theatre feels like much more of a collaborative process. “And it takes the pressure off your shoulders because you’re just one part of a larger device that is intended to awe and inspire,” says Balaban. “I find it liberating that so much is going on without me.”
Not that Balaban has any plans to give up her film and television career to focus solely on the stage. In fact, she’s taking the advice that film, television and stage actress Kathy Baker shared with her on the set of Last Chance Harvey.
“She just wants to work with the best people. I feel the same way,” says Balaban, who points to the short film The New Tenants as an example.
“I had no idea what I was getting into when I decided to be in it except that the casting director is someone I respect immensely and has amazing taste,” she explains. “I worked just two days on it, but over the course of those days I found out our DP had been nominated for an Oscar, oh and our costume designer did Jesus’ Son.” The New Tenants went on to win the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film at last year’s Academy Awards.
Balaban is often asked for advice from aspiring actors — and not just those who wonder how they can become an Xbox villain. And her response is a bit surprising. “The thing we need to discuss is how they are going to generate their own careers and take responsibility for their livelihoods as actors.” Instead of hoping to win an audition, which isn’t so different than hoping to win the lottery, actors need to make their own work, she says.
She’s planning to take her own advice by writing a screenplay based on How Should a Person Be, a book by Toronto writer Sheila Heti.
“It’s about treating your job like a job, and the nice thing about living in Los Angeles is that acting is a valid career,” she says. “You can live and work as an actor and it’s not some magical, mysterious Holy Grail. It’s not so special and whenever acting is debunked I find it so liberating and joyful.”