Toronto actress Christine Horne admits she didn't know what she was doing when she arrived on the Manitoba set of her first feature film, The Stone Angel.
Luckily she had an impressive mentor - Oscar-winner Ellen Burstyn.
"We went out to dinner and she gave me the film 'code,'" Horne explains to
CityNews.ca in an exclusive interview. "On a film set people take for granted that you know the lingo. I had no idea what (they) were saying. She filled me in, helped me read my call sheet. All these things they should have sent me off with a (production assistant) to learn. I had Ellen Burstyn."
The first cinematic rendering of Margaret Laurence's classic 1964 novel about an elderly woman looking back on her life, the mistakes she made, and her one great love, hits Canadian screens Friday. Horne and Burstyn portray flawed protagonist Hagar Shipley at different points in her life.
Horne admits it was daunting playing such a beloved character.
"It was an honour and a lot of pressure because everyone knows (the character). It was something I couldn't dwell on because if I worried about doing it in a way that would please Canada then I wouldn't have been able to do it at all," the 26-year-old notes. "I just had to try to forget about that as much as I could. At a certain point we all had to put the book aside and (say), 'This is the film we're doing, based on the novel but a separate entity.'"
The film's director and screenwriter Kari Skogland agrees - she'd read The Stone Angel several times and actively pursued the chance to make the film her way. One of the biggest challenges she faced in bringing the tale to the big screen was making it universally appealing.
"One of the things I was very conscious of in the adaptation was I wanted it to be more accessible and not a high-brow version. I didn't want people to, particularly if they'd read it in their teen years, be daunted," she explains in a phone call from Los Angeles, adding that one of the biggest changes was contemporizing the story.
"How do you take an epic story like this and make sure you cover all the bases? You either go into the minutiae of one or two events and fully explore (them), or you skip across it and dig into what I felt to be the important bits. I chose the short-hand version because I felt people were going to pick up on the experience side of it. They'd understand with a scant amount of information what (Hagar) was going through."
Alliance optioned rights to the novel from Laurence on her deathbed, Skogland explains, and when she presented her script to them several years ago they loved her vision and decided it was the right time to bring The Stone Angel to the big screen. Filming took place over a month in late 2006 and it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.
Skogland auditioned more than 200 girls for the part of young Hagar, and has nothing but praise for newcomer Horne.
"There was never a false moment with her. She's a real star. I think she has huge potential. She's a Rachel McAdams, she's an Ellen Page - she's any one of these actresses Canada's turning out who are the real deal. They're not in it to jump into Hollywood. Their goal is the work and to find interesting roles," she observes.
Horne echoes that sentiment, saying she's not looking to move to Los Angeles anytime soon. The York University-trained thespian plans to appear in a play at the city's Fringe Festival followed by a turn as Viola in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, put on by the Resurgence Theatre Company in Newmarket.
"I really like it here (in Canada) and I'd love to have a career here," she says. "If I can make a living here, then that'd be great. My family's here, my friends are here and I'm a nationalist. I want to stay."
The Stone Angel opens in theatres across Canada Friday.