Pickle Barrel
EVERY SEPTEMBER, HUNDREDS of
actors and actresses come to our
city to meet the press and bask in
the glow of the Toronto
International Film Festival. For
most of them, the trip represents
just another exotic, barelyglimpsed
stop on a worldwide press
tour. But for Rachel Blanchard, who
stars in Atom Egoyan’s new film
Adoration, “It still feels like home.”
The 32-year-old was born and raised in North Toronto and still has family and friends here. Though her permanent home is technically in Los Angeles, she notes that, “I rarely shoot in L.A., so the idea of home is somewhat relative. You’re always living somewhere else for two-and-a-half months at a time.”
This will be Blanchard’s second trip to the Toronto festival. Her first was in 2005, when she starred in Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies, along with Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon.
“There’s something really special about bringing a Canadian film to your hometown, for me at least,” she says. “It evokes quite a strong reaction.”
Both films had their world premieres as part of the official selection at the Cannes film festival in France, where Egoyan is a frequent attendee and former jury member. He has had five films in that festival’s official competition — Adoration, Where the Truth Lies, Felicia’s Journey, The Sweet Hereafter and Exotica — though none has won the coveted top prize, the Palme d’Or.
Adoration, shot and set in Toronto, follows a high school student named Simon (Devon Bostick) who tells his classmates that his father once tried to blow up a plane on which his mother, then pregnant with him, was a passenger. Scott Speedman plays the boy’s uncle. Egoyan’s wife, Arsinée Khanjian, is the drama teacher who takes an obsessive interest in their family history. Blanchard, whose character has died in a car crash, plays Simon’s mother in a series of flashbacks.
The offer to appear in the movie literally came in the mail while Blanchard was in England, shooting a series of episodes for the popular British sitcom Peep Show.
“My agent sent me the script from Atom, and he had written me a very nice letter saying he’d like me to be a part of it,” she recalls. Egoyan’s only stipulation was that she demonstrate good chemistry with Noam Jenkins, the actor who would play her husband. “We had to really adore each other.”
A screen test with Jenkins sealed the deal. “I still have the letter,” Blanchard says happily, adding, “I really love working with Atom.”
Blanchard will often answer questions about her work with such simple candor. In spite of a long and varied career, she does not exhibit the type of grandiloquence often associated with lifelong actors.
She started acting when she was a little girl, and at 14 had already landed a major part in the TV series War of the Worlds.
She subsequently alternated between movie and television roles, appearing in numerous episodes of the children’s series Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the family drama 7th Heaven and the comedy series Clueless.
It was Clueless, where she starred as Cher Horowitz, the role first played by Alicia Silverstone in the 1995 movie of the same name, that brought her international fame. All the while, Blanchard balanced her career while completing her studies at North Toronto’s Havergal College.
More recently, Blanchard has appeared in the 2006 horrorcomedy Snakes on a Plane, with Samuel L. Jackson, and in the HBO musical-comedy series Flight of the Conchords in which she played the most beautiful girl in the room (depending on the room).
In spite of being in just two episodes of Conchords, Blanchard says she is often recognized as her character, Sally. She credits the musical numbers in those episodes, which include “Song for Sally” and the funny-sultry “Business Time,” for her notoriety.
Blanchard will next be seen in the comedy Growing Op, which was shot in New Brunswick and costars fellow Torontonian Steven Yaffee as a teenager coming of age in a suburban marijuana operation. She describes her character, Crystal, as “this girl who’s not quite right for him.”
Blanchard insists there is not one particular type of role that appeals to her. “I like variety,” she says. “I really like dark comedy, and I like stories that I feel are unique and take chances — which means sometimes they work really well and sometimes they don’t work at all. Sometimes it’s as simple as: ‘Can I have a good time making that movie or playing that part?’”
Such was certainly the case with her second outing in one of Egoyan’s films. “Atom’s interested in everyone and everything,” she says. “He’s really accessible as a director, as complex as his themes may be. He helps you understand your own character in the film.”
And regardless of who the director is, making a second film with anyone can’t help but be smoother sailing. “You know how one another works,” she says. “Atom creates a really calm set; he makes you feel really safe.”
While Blanchard and Speedman are big names in Hollywood, Egoyan insists that his casting choices were made entirely on the basis of who was right for the part. He calls it “one of the weird perversions of this industry” that the first question most people have about any new film is “Who’s in it?” He notes, “Sometimes nobody’s in it that you’ve ever heard of, and that doesn’t diminish the film.”
On the other hand, someone with the celebrity of Blanchard can’t help but raise a film’s profile.
At Cannes this year, the pressure of endless interviews and press conferences, not to mention the stroboscopic flashbulbs on the red carpet, took their toll on the actress. After the festival ended, Blanchard spent a month trekking across Europe, spending time in Paris, London, Glasgow and elsewhere. “I love just taking the train and riding around,” she says. “I had no plan. I just showed up at places where I had friends.”
The Toronto festival may prove a bit more relaxing. It will definitely have a more personal touch. Blanchard is arriving a couple of weeks early to attend the wedding of her sister, Georgina, a fiddle player in an old-time band called Makita Hack and the Log Rollers, often seen playing at the Gladstone Hotel.
Blanchard also has a cottage north of the city where she hopes to spend some time during her visit this fall.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” Blanchard says, speaking of the upcoming nuptials, the festival and the city in general. When she attended her first Toronto film fest three years ago, she remembers, “I really liked it. I like exploring different things that are going on in Toronto in general.” She particularly enjoyed playing the knowledgeable host to showbiz friends from around the world who were new to the city.
She also appreciates that
Toronto is big enough to host a
premiere festival without being allconsumed
by it. Smaller cities, like
Cannes or Park City, Utah, site of
the annual Sundance festival of
independent film, tend to give
themselves over to cinema
completely for 10 days each year.
But while the Yorkville hub of the
festival may be chockablock with
cineastes and stars, Blanchard
says, “If you leave for the afternoon
and go to High Park, it’s like it’s not
going on.” 
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