Sarah Polley

Born: January 8 1979
Where: Toronto, Canada

Polley's breakthrough Hollywood movie was the independent hit Go alongside Scott Wolff and Taye Diggs.

She had landed her first screen role at the age of six, in Disney's One Magic Christmas.

The title role of the Canadian TV series Ramona led to big screen work including the Matt Dillon flop The Big Town and Terry Gilliams The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

In 1990, Polley got a lead role on the TV series The Road to Avonlea and then landed a small role in Atom Egoyan's Exotica and again collaborated with the director in 1997's critically lauded The Sweet Hereafter.

Despite the attentions of Hollywood, she then opted for a small Canadian production, The Last Night, directed by Don McKellar.

Her role in Go combined with her performance in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ and a lead role in Guinevere helped consolidate her reputation.

In 2000, Polley returned to Canada to star in Kathryn Bigelow's drama The Weight of Water and followed that with Michael Winterbottom's The Claim.

She played the daughter of a gold miner (Peter Mullan) who sells his family for a bag of gold.

Her next role saw her essaying a dying mother in the Spanish production My Life Without Me with Mark Ruffalo and Deborah Harry.

Then, in an atypical role, Polley fought gamely against the rampaging zombies of Zack Snyder's remake of George A Romero's classic Dawn of the Dead.

She followed it up with the most subtle performance in Wim Wenders' somewhat tiresome drama Don't Come Knocking, scripted by leading man Sam Shepard.