Post by Lucy on Jun 30, 2011 10:01:22 GMT
Perth real estate industry's loss has been Canadian drama's big gain.
WA actress Helene Joy returned to Perth from Canada about four years ago, fed up with the struggle to succeed as an actor, and trained as a real estate agent, intending to join her mother in the business.
Then the phone rang and it was her Canadian agent asking her to audition for the crime drama, Durham County, which finishes its repeat run on ABC1 this Saturday night.
The next year she also started work on Murdoch Mysteries, the highly successful 19th century police show which begins its fourth series on pay-TV channel 13th Street on Friday.
Speaking from Montreal, where she was on holiday, Joy said she had returned to WA intending to take a break from the acting business.
"My mother is in real estate and she does well for herself so I did train and I am a licensed real estate agent in Australia," she said.
"I lasted about a week and then I realised I am an actress not by luck nor because I'm too lazy to do something else, it is something I have been doing since I was 14 and there is a reason for it.
"I sent an audition tape from Perth and got Durham County and they flew me back."
Joy made the right choice. She went on to win a Gemini Award for Durham County - the Canadian equivalent of an Emmy - and last year she was not only an acting nominee, again for Durham County, but also a presenter.
It has been a long journey for the former Kewdale Senior High School student, who says she was originally inspired to act by her drama teacher Isabel Lacy.
She worked in the school holidays with a youth theatre company and then did a year as a theatre major at Curtin University before winning entry to the WA Academy of Performing Arts.
After graduating from WAAPA she worked with Bell Shakespeare and on TV shows before heading to Canada on what she described as a whim.
"It was a boy," she said, "a Canadian lad, and he was returning home.
"I was living in Melbourne at the time and I just thought 'oh, whatever, I'll go, too'.
"We went to Los Angeles and I didn't really like it then, though I love it now.
"So we moved up to Vancouver and later I settled in Toronto."
Joy had some early success, winning a Leo Award in 2005 for best actress in the film, Desolation Sound, and a Gemini nomination for her role as a baddie in a forerunner of the Murdoch Mysteries series, Under the Dragon's Tail: A Murdoch Mystery.
Murdoch Mysteries is set in Toronto in the 1890s when forensic science was in its infancy. Yannick Bisson is Inspector William Murdoch and Joy plays the city's coroner, Julia Ogden.
She admits that nobody like Ogden could have existed in Canada in the 1890s.
"Down in the States things were a little bit more progressive but here there were not many female doctors and those there were, were limited to paediatrics," Joy said.
"We have taken a little bit of dramatic licence. There is not really any possibility that a woman would have been working for the government alongside the police force in the way Julia does.
"But it is a great role and a lot of women find it very inspiring."
Source: thewest.com.au
WA actress Helene Joy returned to Perth from Canada about four years ago, fed up with the struggle to succeed as an actor, and trained as a real estate agent, intending to join her mother in the business.
Then the phone rang and it was her Canadian agent asking her to audition for the crime drama, Durham County, which finishes its repeat run on ABC1 this Saturday night.
The next year she also started work on Murdoch Mysteries, the highly successful 19th century police show which begins its fourth series on pay-TV channel 13th Street on Friday.
Speaking from Montreal, where she was on holiday, Joy said she had returned to WA intending to take a break from the acting business.
"My mother is in real estate and she does well for herself so I did train and I am a licensed real estate agent in Australia," she said.
"I lasted about a week and then I realised I am an actress not by luck nor because I'm too lazy to do something else, it is something I have been doing since I was 14 and there is a reason for it.
"I sent an audition tape from Perth and got Durham County and they flew me back."
Joy made the right choice. She went on to win a Gemini Award for Durham County - the Canadian equivalent of an Emmy - and last year she was not only an acting nominee, again for Durham County, but also a presenter.
It has been a long journey for the former Kewdale Senior High School student, who says she was originally inspired to act by her drama teacher Isabel Lacy.
She worked in the school holidays with a youth theatre company and then did a year as a theatre major at Curtin University before winning entry to the WA Academy of Performing Arts.
After graduating from WAAPA she worked with Bell Shakespeare and on TV shows before heading to Canada on what she described as a whim.
"It was a boy," she said, "a Canadian lad, and he was returning home.
"I was living in Melbourne at the time and I just thought 'oh, whatever, I'll go, too'.
"We went to Los Angeles and I didn't really like it then, though I love it now.
"So we moved up to Vancouver and later I settled in Toronto."
Joy had some early success, winning a Leo Award in 2005 for best actress in the film, Desolation Sound, and a Gemini nomination for her role as a baddie in a forerunner of the Murdoch Mysteries series, Under the Dragon's Tail: A Murdoch Mystery.
Murdoch Mysteries is set in Toronto in the 1890s when forensic science was in its infancy. Yannick Bisson is Inspector William Murdoch and Joy plays the city's coroner, Julia Ogden.
She admits that nobody like Ogden could have existed in Canada in the 1890s.
"Down in the States things were a little bit more progressive but here there were not many female doctors and those there were, were limited to paediatrics," Joy said.
"We have taken a little bit of dramatic licence. There is not really any possibility that a woman would have been working for the government alongside the police force in the way Julia does.
"But it is a great role and a lot of women find it very inspiring."
Source: thewest.com.au
