Sarah Polley

The 24-year-old Polley has acted professionally since the age of 6. She starred in the Atom Egoyan films Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter. She's currently starring in the film My Life Without Me, based on a story by Nanci Kincaid called Pretending the Bed is a Raft. It's about a young, working single mother who learns she's going to die but keeps it a secret. The changes she makes to her life give her a new sense of liberation. Polley also will appear in the upcoming film The I Inside and a remake of the cult horror film Dawn of the Dead.

In a striking documentary, Sarah Polley turns the camera on her own family. The director and actor, known for films such as Away from Her and The Sweet Hereafter, was teased growing up about not looking like her actor father. At 27, she discovered that it wasn't a joke.

Canadian actress Sarah Polley, who's perhaps best known in the United States as the injured Nicole in Atom Egoyan's wrenching The Sweet Hereafter and the drug-dealing Ronna in Doug Liman's Go, makes her directorial debut with the intimate indie drama Away from Her.

The new movie is based on a short story by Alice Munro; it stars Julie Christie as a woman with Alzheimer's, and features Olympia Dukakis, Michael Murphy and Gordon Pinsent. The movie has generated buzz on the film-festival circuit, and opens in the U.S. on May 4.