"Acting as inspiration"
Colin Hunter

The road from Avonlea led to Kitchener this week.

Megan Follows, the actor who became a national star as the embodiment of Anne of Green Gables in the iconic Canadian miniseries, hoped to inspire a new generation of performers Wednesday at Eastwood Collegiate.

"This business will soon be yours," Follows told more than 100 students in the school's integrated arts program.

"It needs your vitality, your energy, your stories. The future is yours and I'm excited to see what you'll bring forth."

The students peppered Follows with questions, many thoughtful -- How will government funding cuts affect the arts in Canada? -- and some merely curious -- How many times have you dyed your hair for a role?

Of course, one dye-job in particular came immediately to Follows' mind: the red pigtailed hairdo she sported as Anne, the precocious chatterbox of P.E.I.

But there was otherwise little talk about Green Gables during Follows' appearance, since the teenage students had not yet been born when the miniseries originally aired (several Eastwood teachers, however, clamoured for autographs).

Instead, the topic of conversation gravitated toward the nuts and bolts of showbiz: how to overcome stage fright, how to secure an agent and how to impress casting directors at auditions.

All of which are topics that Follows knows well, having worked consistently on TV, stage and film for as long as she can remember.

From her professional debut in a Bell Canada commercial at age nine, she went on to appear in such TV shows as The Littlest Hobo, The Facts of Life and contemporary hit series ER, CSI, Law and Order and The X-Files.

She was born into an acting family headed by patriarch Ted Follows, who is now mostly retired from the Canadian stage and living in Kitchener.

In fact, the elder Follows joined his daughter at Eastwood Wednesday and regaled the students with tales about the early years of live theatre in Canada.

Father and daughter took turns fielding questions from the young audience, while Susan Follows (Megan's stepmother and a music teacher at Eastwood) looked on.

"The theatre was our religion," Ted proclaimed, prompting nods of agreement from the rest of the clan.

Megan recently wrapped up a month-long stint starring in Top Girls at Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre.

The lecture at Eastwood was one of her last showbiz appearances before returning to her Los Angeles home to "take a breather" and attend to her other job -- being a mother of two teenagers.

She repeatedly thanked the Eastwood students for their thoughtful questions and attentiveness during the morning discussion, since she doesn't always see such wide-eyed enthusiasm from her teens at home.

"I'm impressed you're awake!" she joked.

"And I want you to be awake and really hear this: you are the voice of the next generation in this industry. My wish for you is that all the fabulous creative energy you have is poured into acting, dancing, music and writing."

Source: Guelph Mercury, The Record