week to work with senior level drama
students on various plays. During that
time, students got an amazing and rare
opportunity to develop their movement
and characterization skills under the
guidance of a successful actress, who is
also an LPCI alumna.
and has gone on to star in numerous
plays and television series. However,
Reid did not wait until fi nishing school
to start acting.
girl who liked to show off and imi-
"I thought in a way my awkwardness
would militate against me becoming an
actress because I felt somewhat socially
awkward, and I thought that I was a bit
too loud and voluble to be an actress,
but I did enjoy performing. It's terrible
to say, but I enjoyed showing off in front
of people, and it's awful because that's
not acting, but it's part of it."
regarded acting as a way to compli-
ment her personality and insecurities.
"When I was growing up, we moved a
lot to diff erent countries in the world
because my father was a doctor in the
tion because I didn't have that kind of
security or underpinnings that you have
when you live in the same place for a
long time. I think I became fairly adept
at observing people in diff erent cultures
and mimicking them, and I suppose
mimicking is an aspect of acting, but it's
not the essence of it."
was once applauded by a teacher who
caught Fiona imitating her so pre-
cisely. When Fiona was in high school
at Lawrence Park, there were plays but
no drama classes, so she wanted to be
part of the Drama Club and the school
productions badly, but, ironically, never
made it. However, her teachers saw her
penchant to perform and supplied her
with oral essays and debates to express
her dramatic creativity.
ber being quite young and there being
a pantomime, and they asked people at
the end to go up on stage. I remember
just thinking of it as such a magic place.
I really wanted to go up on stage and
be on that side of the lights, but I didn't
have the nerve." When Fiona did, how-
ever, muster up the nerve to develop her
acting skills, she was inspired by another
actress. "There was an actress named
Hollis McLaren, and she seemed to me
to be what a real actress was because
she had that kind of focus and intensity
that I didn't."
"I felt that I had found a family when I
did fi nally get into a play. I never really
looked back after that." Since then, Fiona
Reid has starred as Cathy King in the
television series, King of Kensington, and
acted in the hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding
and numerous other television series
and fi lms. Today, Fiona Reid is a perma-
nent fi xture in Canadian theatre, having
performed on every stage in Canada as
well as the Shaw and Stratford Festivals.
played the role of Sister Aloysius in the
play Doubt at Halifax's Neptune Theatre,
and she is probably going to perform in