The Ottawa Citizen - June 12, 1999

"Anne follows Megan around"
Margo Roston

It's a hot and sunny Saturday and Megan Follows is late for the interview at Heritage College in Hull. That's because she's been held up in class by her nine acting students.

It's hard to imagine Anne of Green Gables holed up in a CEGEP, but when she arrives she looks exhausted and rumpled -- her bright red hair askew.

Although she lives in Los Angeles, there's nothing star-like about the petite 30-year-old actor who spent the first week of June in Hull coaching some of Canada's up-and-coming actors at the Summer Institute of Film and Television, a gathering spot for 250 film and television wannabes from across Canada.

Among a mega-cast staff of directors, technicians and producers, Ms. Follows is a leading lady.

This is the second year she's taught at the intensive week-long school and she admits that she finds it "really rewarding and really exhausting."

"The first time I was incredibly nervous, but I had a great group of people and they made me feel incredibly welcome. This time it's also a great group of people. I teach them what I know and they know I'm not a professional teacher."

But she is a recognized theatre and television actor whose experience far outshines her years. Ms. Follows became a household name by the time she was 18 when she starred as Anne in Anne of Green Gables in 1985. Later, she went on to star in Anne of Avonlea. Since, she has played characters ranging from Juliet and Desdemona in Shakespeare classics to Nora in A Doll's House, one of her favourite roles. She speaks of the world of theatre and films like someone twice her age.

Now the mother of two, she admits she doesn't make the scene in Hollywood but is usually home with her children, Lyla, 7, and Russell, 4, and her partner, Stuart Hughes, who played Iago in the Ottawa production of Othello at the National Arts Centre more than a year and a half ago. Ms. Follows played Desdemona in that production, but "we were already a couple by then."

And she's happy in L.A., she says.

"I live in a funky kind of area and I like the geography, I like the desert and the mountains and I have sister there who has children and who is pregnant. It's a pretty low-key life, because I'm home with the kids. I'm sure someone is having a lot of Hollywood out there," she says with a grin.

While home is L.A., Ms. Follows is staunchly Canadian and very family-oriented. She owns a home in Nova Scotia and spends a lot of time in Toronto where another sister, a brother and her parents live and work in the world of theatre.

"There's not a doctor in the group, unfortunately. I don't know what we were thinking!" she laughs.

And although her family is theatrically influential, it wasn't pull that won her the coveted Anne role. She beat out about 3,000 young actors for the plum job.

During her career she's won an Emmy award, a Genie award and an Oscar for best short film, Boys and Girls in 1983. She has appeared at Stratford, the Atlantic Theatre Festival, the ATF Guthrie Theatre and the Williamstown Theatre. She also appeared in numerous television episodes and dramas, including the much-heralded Under the Piano.

Ask her what her favourite roles are and she's quick to answer Nora in A Doll's House and of course Anne. It was on the Anne of Green Gables set that she met and worked with the esteemed Colleen Dewhurst.

"She was memorable," says Ms. Follows, "a real bawdy, funny person, a lady of the theatre."

She admits she's had a lot of good times, either in the theatre "just having a ball" or in rehearsals. But as glamorous as it sounds, she's practical enough to look at acting as hard work.

"You have to be adaptable, because you're working in different places with different people," she says. "It's not always fun, but first and foremost it's a job and you have to play by the rules."

It's when the rules get broken that problems happen. She was once shot by a careless actor. Ms. Follows refuses to give his name or name the production, but in a hostage scene, a blank went off and hit her between her eardrum and her eye.

"I was lucky," she says. "I was burnt along the side of my face and my eardrum was temporarily damaged. Now I don't care if anybody says `hurry up, hurry up, we're losing the shot and it's very important.' I'll never do that again."

When money is at stake, everything else goes out the window, she says. "Everyone's pumped and charged and everyone is screaming at you. It's all pandemonium and craziness and people do the most ridiculous things because money's at sake."

Mostly though, life on stage and in front of the camera's is danger-free. And she's looking forward to new challenges. She'd like to direct something, she says.

"That's a tall order and I know a lot of actors say that. You start by creating something small like a lot of students who do a short film. Then you see it's something you're any good at."

At the moment she seems content. She recently finished filming a CBC mini-series, Anne of Green Gables; The Continuing Story, and there's a lot of work out there she says. It's a long journey, she admits, and for now she wants to keep acting in interesting productions.

But there's a more pressing problem this day. Her students and staff members are waiting for her for to join them at a barbecue on the college grounds. A real trooper, she won't disappoint them.

Source: The Ottawa Citizen