Sarah Polley is an actress and director renowned in her native Canada for her political activism. Blessed with an extremely expressive face that enables directors to minimize dialog due to her uncanny ability to suggest a character`s thoughts, Polley has become a favorite of critics for her sensitive portraits of wounded and conflicted young women in independent films.

She was born into a show business family: her father, Michael Polley, appeared with her in the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) and on the television series "Road to Avonlea" (1989); and her mother, Diane Polley, was an actress and casting director. It was her mother`s connections that launched Sarah, at her own insistence, on an acting career at the age of four, following in the footsteps of her older brother Mark Polley. A second brother, John Buchan, is a casting director and producer.

Her career as a child actress shifted into high gear when she was cast as the Cockney waif Jody Turner in Lantern Hill (1990) (TV), for which she won a Gemini Award, the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy, in 1992. Produced by Kevin Sullivan, the film was based on the book by Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables (1985) (TV). When Sullivan created a television series based on Montgomery`s work, he cast Polley in the lead role of Sara Stanley in "Road to Avonlea" (1989). The series propelled Polley into the first rank of Canadian TV stars and made her independently wealthy by the age of 14.

Her personal life was deeply affected by the death of her mother Diane from cancer shortly after her 11th birthday, a development that ironically paralleled the fictional life of her character Sara. Highly intelligent and politically progressive at a young age, Polley eventually rebelled against what she felt was the Americanization of the series after it was picked up by the Disney Channel for distribution in the US, eventually dropping out of the show. Though she does not blame her parents, she remains publicly disenchanted over the loss of her childhood and, in October 2003, said she is working on a script about a 12-year-old girl on a TV show.

Polley, who picked up a second Gemini Award for her performance in the TV series "Straight Up" (1996), subsequently quit acting and high school to turn her attention to politics, positioning herself on the extreme left of Canada`s left-of-center New Democratic Party. The publicity ensuing from her losing some teeth after being slugged by an Ontario policeman during a protest against the Conservative provincial government, plus the stinging cynicism from some other activists unimpressed by her celebrity, led her to lower her political profile temporarily and return to acting in Atom Egoyan`s film The Sweet Hereafter (1997). It was her appearance as Nicole, the teenage girl injured in a school bus accident who serves as the conscience of the small town rent by the tragedy, that first brought her to the attention of critics in the US. In Canada, the role was heralded by critics as her successful breakthrough to adult roles. It was her second film with Egoyan, who wrote the part with her in mind when he adapted the novel by Russell Banks, who, ironically, is American. Predictions of an Academy Award nomination and future stardom were part of the critical consensus, and she received her first Best Actress Genie nomination from Canada`s Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television and the Best Supporting Actress awa