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Polley first attracted attention back in 1996 for her performance as the crippled but precociously wise survivor of a school-bus crash in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter. Her current roles couldn't be more different. In Guinevere she must hold her own as a love interest opposite the formidable Irish actor Stephen Rea. In Go she is a young supermarket cashier who gets caught up in a drug deal gone awry. The part called for a sweet but tough chick who could take her lumps. Director Doug Liman (Swingers) had originally courted Ricci, but scheduling conflicts arose. Polley, who possesses the look and spark of a younger Uma Thurman, has a surprising wild streak that belies her fresh-scrubbed beauty. "She's young, but she's led an incredibly full life," says Liman. "She's been involved in a lot of political protests in Canada--had her teeth kicked in by a cop--and she knows something about the streets. Besides all that, she's an amazing actress."
A performer from the age of four, Polley doesn't take her job lightly. "Acting can be a really shallow thing to do with your life," she says. "You have to choose things that actually have something to say." Should she emerge from the festival as this year's phenom, Polley may prove a reluctant superstar. "I don't want my life to change too much, so maybe I'm going in the wrong direction," she says, laughing. "I never want my privacy or personal life compromised by what I do, so I guess I'm not interested in getting a higher profile." According to those who know her well, she'd rather be organizing nonunion crews on a movie set than blowing air kisses at a splashy premiere. She refuses to move from Toronto to Los Angeles, passes on overtly commercial scripts and nixes interview requests from celebrity-oriented magazines. Well, O.K., she did appear as one of Vanity Fair's upcoming hot Hollywood cover girls--but hey, she refused to wear makeup for the photo shoot. Now that's truly independent.