She is one of only 12 female directors to work on a regular basis on Law & Order SVU and she's a regular on shows like Orphan Black and The Firm. Last year Shaver returned home to Canada to act in her first film in a decade, Down River by Ben Ratner, a touching film shot on a tiny budget. It opens this weekend in Canada. Shaver spoke with me in Toronto and shared her passion for acting again.
This is your return
to acting after ten years directing in the US. How does it feel?
Last weekend when Down River opened in Vancouver I went into
the theatre full of people and there I was
35 feet high on the screen and they were laughing crying and oh
yeah!! It came back. None of us make movies quoting Shakespeare
perfectly to a rose in a field but really truly communicating and touching and
finding that common humanity in all of us. You can amuse the conscious human
mind and reach in and touch the mind and resonate.
What a wonderful
performance in Down River. It’s deep and
authentic and she becomes simple yet complex and real and it concerns death.
How was it preparing for that?
My husband was in Atlanta and Tennessee shooting the film 42
and I was in Vancouver. I just said okay I’m going to brush my teeth and hunker
down. We are in denial of death, and focus on sex and drugs and rock and roll,
all of which I love, but it was profound for me to live with an acute awareness
of my own mortality for those weeks. It
came at a time when my ex-husband Steve Reuther died of cancer. He was younger than me and we weren’t married
for long, I am wildly happy and married to Steve Smith for 26 years, but I
spent time with Steve in the last years of his life and I had really gotten to
see up close how we come to a point in our life that we have one thing left to
do and that is to die. We cross the threshold “into that dark cottage” (Mary
Oliver’s When Death Comes). We can do it
only by ourselves, the body’s energy body doesn’t want to die. It takes energy
to let go and surrender in into the unknown and so I was able to being that
understanding or really root that understanding and experience, in playing this
role. At the time 3 of our dear friends were having that conversation with
cancer so again it was an opportunity for me to show up and make that and allow
and accept that imaginary context for my own self and accept my mortality.
Your character is
based on the late actress Babs Chula and her mentorship of young artists
including the Ben Ratner who wrote and directs Down River.
He’d called me out of the blue three years ago and just said
please, please, please, please, and pitched but he had no script. By the end of his passion and commitment and
it’s hard to make a little film, big film but little his passion and his
heartfelt connection to the material. I’m not interested in doing a biopic and
no it’s not but it’s inspired by this woman who was a mentor. I’m in if you can
deliver a great script I’m in. So it
came in fits and starts, the first act then the second and we were hanging
on. You don’t want to get stuck in a
thing that becomes a vanity project indulging make me crazy for him to create
it between women. And then be able to
cast and deliver and we’re talking really down and dirty, we had a light or two
and Larry who produces and the cinematographer did a remarkable job tiny crew.
Her apartment and
clothes are very specific. They suggest
that she might have been a hippy, and traveled and is sentimental. Does that help an actor?
The clothes came out of my closet and it really helps. The furnishings and paintings were pieces
from Babs Chulaz’s apartment except for some things I brought there are a few
silk scarves and I’d sit and curl up ion them, one of the anchors one makes.
This little film reminded me you don’t make a movie for $10M, you can make one
for $125 thousand!
You left Canada and
acting for the most part to direct in the US and work on huge projects.
When I'm directing and I love it, people say who do you love
more, each the same, directing there is a lot that happens and I'm not limited
by what I look like I can tell the story of a ten year old boy because I' m not
limited by physical being, as an actor you only play the part that involves you
and your face a voice and hair so I certainly over a decade rich and
Do you remember
fondly the early days in Canadian TV and film?
Yes, I do think fondly of those times, I was actually as I
arrived in Toronto yesterday it resonated with the first Toronto Dusty Cohl who
founded the Toronto International Film Festival (The Festival of Festivals
then) the only credit he ever took was an accomplice. I was in Outrageous and he found money for
us. Then once in LA I got a movie role
but I had no papers and he said “Just lie”.
I was weeping in a lawyer’s office saying “I can’t do that!” and they
said to get papers I’d have to be a big star in Canada and I said “Well there
aren’t big stars in Canada! That’s why Margot Kidder and Donald Sutherland
left!” I came from there to Toronto on
my 23rd birthday and the four years I spent in Toronto or whatever
reason, my career took off in the English speaking film industry. The Toronto media like George Anthony and Ron
Base and Bruce Kirkland at that time really helped me launch my career. Those
guys made me a star in my own country.
Ten years ago I got a Star on the Walk of Fame here and it means so much
to me.
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