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Camille Sullivan is Leo Award actor.

Photo courtesy Camille Sullivan

Award-winning local actor continues to thrill audience

By Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins

Published 2:16 PST, Fri March 1, 2024

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Our City Tonight likes to capture the stars that attend the Whistler Film Festival each year and the movies that they are starring in or directing. At the annual festival, we do interviews on the red carpet, attend many great parties, and of course, see great films. Often, we will keep some of these interviews that we do with the actors, or the film directors and we will hang onto those interviews until the films are released. That is the case with Camille Sullivan. We interviewed her at the Whistler Film Festival in late 2022 and held onto this interview until now. The film has finally been released, a film that we both loved, and it is called EXILE.

Camille Sullivan is a Leo award-winning actress, and she moves seamlessly between TV and film acting in some really great projects.

OCT: Congratulations on the worldwide premier of EXILE which has been released after debuting at the 2022 Whistler Film Festival. We loved you in these thriller movies and previously watched you in HUNTER HUNTER, and now in EXILE, another great thriller. How do you prepare for this type of role?

CS: I really love doing the thrillers too. I have started doing more horror movies and I even have another one coming up later this year. I find myself loving it so much because it is so much fun. You asked how do I prepare for these roles, well for any movie I try to figure out what my character’s world view is and that can affect the decision how I can get what I want and then figure out how I go about getting what I want. In EXILE, I think her worldview can be summed up by saying “no one is going to save me so, if I want my life, it’s up to only me to grab it”.

OCT: So, you would describe your character as strong and vulnerable. Audiences are getting more and more knowledgeable with films, and we must say, this movie kept us guessing until the very end. Surprisingly, that is not as common as people might think when it comes to a plot. Often, we’ll say that we saw that coming, with this movie we didn’t. Tell us a little bit about the journey you went on in the film and a little bit about Adam Beach, who plays your estranged husband.

CS: It is a journey, and when I was watching it the other day, at the premier, I couldn’t believe it even though I knew what was going to happen, obviously. I kept having this feeling as I’m watching the film that there’s so much more yet to happen. You think it’s going to go like this, but it goes in a completely different direction and then it swings back. And because it’s a psychological thriller, you have to ask is this real or is it in his head, is he delusional? Am I delusional? My character does some pretty crazy things as well and I make some interesting choices. So, to prepare for the role, I start with that worldview and then I figure out what this person needs to live. What do they need to be happy and then how they’ll achieve these goals, and then I throw myself into the role as much as possible.

OCT: It’s important to mention that one of the stars of the film really is the backdrop, which is Powell River, BC. We have to ask, was it as cold as it looked?

CS: Oh, yes.

OCT: We understand you couldn’t do this movie in the summertime as you needed to have that desolate and isolated look about it.

CS: We got that for sure. There was an atmospheric river, there were torrential rains with winds, it was real. And Sterling Bancroft, our director of photography, was so good, and it all looks so beautiful on the screen.

OCT: We should mention Adam Beach, your co-star, who also gave a great performance. Additionally, you also had a great supporting cast. The environment is also one of the cast members in this film, and we love Garry Chalk too, that must have been fun working with him.

CS: Garry Chalk had one of my favourite lines in the whole movie and it’s a curse, so I actually can’t say it here. But it made me laugh so hard.

OCT: It is a great cast, and there are characters in the film that could easily slip into cliché, but they don’t. On a sidenote, we certainly want to mention nostalgically that you were in, if not the first, but possibly the second episode of our television show that appeared online back in 2015. This early version of the show was only a seven or eight- minute online show at the time. You were also on the first TV version which was extended to a 30-minute show in 2016.

CS: Wow, and you keep having me on the show, thank you.

OCT: Of course, we love having you on the show and we look forward to seeing more films with one of our favourite actors, Camille Sullivan.

Check out the movie EXILE now available on Home Streaming. For video interview in full go to richmondsentinel.ca/videos