The Ottawa Citizen - December 4, 1997

"Leaving Avonlea Behind Megan Follows Takes the Stage in Othello"
Janice Kennedy

It is a grey winter's morning, and Megan Follows' voice sounds as if it were fighting its way out from behind clenched teeth, the normally sunny tone distinctly grim.

Sure doesn't sound like Anne of Green Gables.

Does Follows find that the sweetheart role -- which splashed her name and face across the world's television screens a decade ago in Kevin Sullivan's adaptation of the Lucy Maud Montgomery classic -- does she find that the role continues to dog her professional steps?

"That only happens in this country," Follows responds. Grimly.

Perhaps it is because she is feeling a little under the weather. The actor, who opens tonight as Desdemona in Michael Langham's Othello at the National Arts Centre, is on a brief rest break after the production's initial run, Oct. 25-Nov. 23, at Edmonton's Citadel Theatre. As she speaks by phone, she is at her mother's house in Toronto with her two young children. Megan has been feeling unwell this particular morning, says her mother, actor Dawn Greenhalgh, explaining why the interview has been delayed 2 1/2 hours. In the background can be heard the sounds of children (three-year-old Russell and Lyla, nearly six), the product of Follows' four-year marriage to lighting technician Chris Porter, a union that ended in 1995.

Add factors like leaden skies and that subject again -- the spunky redhead from P.E.I. who won't go away -- and, well. It's enough to make any hard-working actor sound grim.

"In this country, I've worked twice as hard to be seen for myself and my achievements," Follows explains. She has just finished appearing in CBC's Major Crime, playing a crown attorney prosecuting a pedophile. In 1995, CBC viewers were moved by her portrait of autism in Under the Piano.

For the past two summer seasons, she has appeared live at the new Atlantic Theatre Festival in Wolfville, N.S., performing Ibsen and Chekhov, as well as Restoration comedy. Before that, she was Mozart's wife in the acclaimed production of Amadeus, staged in 1995 at Stratford. Stratford was where her since-divorced parents (Greenhalgh and Ted Follows, now semi-retired) were members of the famous festival's early companies; it was also where Megan herself made a memorable Shakespearean debut in 1992 when Richard Monette cast her in his Romeo and Juliet.

But still, Anne persists in trailing her every move, at least in Canada.

"In the U.S.," says Follows, a current Los Angeles resident who has lived south of the border for more than a decade now, "people tend to celebrate you for an achievement, then say 'Now what can you do for us'?" But not here.

She adds quickly that she's not talking about audiences. It's the Canadian show biz establishment she suggests keeps her typecast in the carrot-topped role that catapulted her as a teenager to stardom (or what passes for stardom in this country).

In fact, Follows has a couple of bones to pick with that establishment.

Yes, she considers herself a Canadian actor, despite her residency in L.A. ("There's a lot of us down there"). She would like to be able to stay in Canada, where she was born and went to school, to raise her children.

But before anything else, Follows says, she is an actor. "And actors go where they can get the work. In Canada, we often can't get the work."

She is distinctly critical of those big film projects in major Canadian cities that should spell jobs for Canadian actors. Filmed here, she observes, with Canadian facilities and Canadian crews (and "often accessing Canadian dollars") the productions rely heavily on U.S. actors.

"You can only bang your head against that wall so many times before you say, 'That's it, I'm outta here'."

Follows, now 29, has been acting since the age of eight, when she made her professional debut in a commercial for Bell Canada. Given her bloodlines (apart from her parents, her three siblings, including Forever Plaid producer Laurence Follows, are all involved with theatre or showbiz) and the 21 years of experience, you might think Follows has had all the training she needs. In fact, she just can't get enough.

A veteran of film and television, she deliberately removed herself from that medium temporarily a couple of years ago to learn more about acting from the live stage perspective.

"I wanted to have the luxury of the rehearsal process and growing with something," she explains. "I thought live theatre would teach me the essence of acting, and not just the skill, which I already had. On stage, a lot more of the craft becomes required, and I wanted to learn how to use it."

Follows says she had already developed in her art a sense of "spontaneity and reality," which she says are the best virtues of television and film acting. She wanted to take that sensibility, she says, and bring it to the stage, where the resulting blend, she believes, can create a richness and depth of portrayal that surpasses the single dimension of the one medium or the other.

"Theatre that's blown me away, has been when the two are married." By way of example, she cites a New York stage production she once saw of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, with film star Vanessa Redgrave. "It was spellbinding."

By the same token, she says, the greatest film actors seem to have come from live theatre, bringing all their training and instincts with them. She rhymes off Ian Holm (especially in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter), Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren to make her point.

Follows has been aided in her quest to absorb some of the finer intricacies of classical stage work by an apprenticeship, of sorts, with Michael Langham. The legendary director, artistic director of the Stratford Festival following the founding tenure of his friend Tyrone Guthrie, directed Follows in both A Doll's House and Uncle Vanya at the Atlantic Theatre Festival, and is at the helm for the Othello co-production in which Follows makes her NAC debut as Desdemona.

"It's been a period of growth for me. Working with Michael is a huge challenge. He's extremely demanding and he's not always the most gentle. It's a test of will, courage and strength. And I wouldn't have changed it for anything."

She marvels at the energy level of Langham, who is closing in on 80. "He's so driven, so specific, so sharp. Young or old, I've never met anyone like that before."

Follows says she is grateful not only to have worked with Langham, but to be doing Shakespeare as well.

"I think most performers have special feelings for Shakespeare, getting to use language that is incredibly beautiful. In Shakespeare, the scope of feelings is so enormous, but there are still words for everything in language that is huge and poetic."

She would, she says, love to do more work from the Bard.

"I'd love to do Rosalind (As You Like It) -- and the Shrew, even though she's a difficult character in today's context. And Isabel, in Measure for Measure. I'd love to do Measure for Measure with Michael Langham."

Source: Ottawa Citizen