I love zombies. Every movie should have at least one 
Former child star and political activist Sarah Polley broke into adult filmmaking with Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Since then she has notched up a series of acclaimed appearances, in films such as Go, The Weight Of Water and The Claim. Her latest film, My Life Without Me, casts her as Ann, a young working-class mother dying of cancer. Next year she will be seen in a big budget remake of Dawn Of The Dead.
Films about terminal illness can be terribly sentimental. Did that worry you?
If someone had described the plot to me I probably wouldn't have read the script. On the face of it, the premise is boring and mawkish, and it sounds like something that belongs on television. But I actually read the script knowing nothing about it, and found it constantly surprising and interesting.
You're understated even when Ann receives her terminal diagnosis. Was it your choice to play it that way?
It was all there in the script. I appreciated that because I feel like people react in all kinds of different ways to this kind of news. But it's like there's no representation of people that don't do really dramatic things when dramatic things happen to them.
Did your own mother's death from cancer when you were 11 make doing this difficult?
It's always, I think, really good to go over the other side of an experience you've had and see it through another person's eyes. I discovered that knowing you were leaving your children would probably be a lot harder than losing your mum when you're a child. So it was interesting to be thinking about that for a few months.
Given your left-wing politics, were you attracted by the fact that Ann comes to view consumerism as a distraction from the realities of life, like death?
Yeah, I was interested in that and I was, of course, interested in the fact that this is a movie about people who live in a trailer and it's not funny. There is a disturbing trend in American and Canadian films where anyone beneath a certain income level is portrayed as stupid or white trash, or played for comic value. One of the things I loved about this film is that these people are portrayed with dignity, which shouldn't be so astounding, but it is in the context of movies like Buffalo 66. I really think it took someone from outside [Spain] to do that.
There's a similar message about consumerism in George Romero's Dawn Of The Dead. Was that what attracted you to Zack Snyder's remake?
Yeah, I love that it was an allegory for consumerism trapped in this cheesy, completely ridiculous zombie movie. Plus I love zombies. Every movie should have at least one.
Is this a permanent change of direction for you?
No, I don't want to do lots of huge movies. But I've always been ripping my heart out of my chest trying to have these intense experiences. And I wanted to see if I was capable of running around with a shotgun, blowing zombies' heads off and having a good time. And I was.
Was it liberating?
Yeah, because I feel like I have taken myself way too seriously and been way too precious about things. I mean, come on, we're making movies here. Is it really going to affect the world if I do something for other reasons? Nobody cares. Nobody is watching me wondering what I'm going to do next. That's a totally narcissistic way of thinking and I think you should just do what you want.
