Pickle Barrel
“SORRY, MY VOICE is a little rusty,” says Gemini Award–winning actress and Summerhill resident Kristin Booth. “I’ve been talking all week on-set, so I’ve worn it out a bit.”
Not that she’s complaining. Booth has two films premiering at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Ed Gass-Donnelly’s This Beautiful City, and Martin Gero’s romantic comedy Young People F***ing, as well as a starring role in a new CBC drama and a BBC miniseries under her belt, she knows she’s in a position any actor would envy.
“I really just have always loved to act,” says Booth. “I like to be challenged in the work I do, and I feel blessed to work at something I love and to make a living at it.”
Success has been a steady climb for this North Toronto beauty — a blond bombshell who literally “stopped traffic” while posing for our cover shoot just up the street from her home at Yonge and Davenport.
She says she discovered her love of acting while still in primary school when she auditioned and won a role in a local theatre production of the musical Annie, in Stratford, Ontario.
“I was just an orphan in the background — I think I only had a line or two — but it was definitely enough to give me the acting bug,” she says.
By age 12, Booth had landed her first paid role, doing summer stock theatre at the Huron Country Playhouse in Grand Bend, Ontario. It was then that she came to the realization that acting could become an actual career.
“At that point, I made the connection that ‘Oh you can get paid for this.…’ I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me earlier,” she says and laughs. “So I told my parents, and they said, ‘Well you have to graduate from high school and go to university first.’”
Booth remained true to her parents’ wishes and graduated from Ryerson Polytechnic University’s theatre program in 1997. Along the way, she honed her skills by acting in school plays and teaching summer camp theatre classes.
The year Booth graduated from Ryerson she also made her television debut and since then has earned high praise for her work in theatre, television and film, including a 2005 Gemini Award for best supporting actress in a guest role for her work on Global Television’s Regenesis.
“There is nothing like being recognized by your peers and rewarded for the work that you’ve done,” Booth says. “It was amazing. I’d be lying if I said that there weren’t times in my life when I’ve felt insecure about work and if I’m going to work again. So definitely receiving an award for your work reaffirms the fact that people are appreciating what you do and you’re not completely off base.”
And now Booth will get an opportunity to show off her acting chops to an international audience when she makes her debut at the TIFF this month.
“I’m really excited,” she says. “It’s my first time at the festival, and it’s a good feeling.”
In Ed Gass-Donnelly’s This Beautiful City, a gritty urban drama set in Toronto’s downtown west end, Booth plays Pretty, a drug-addicted prostitute. The film was shot in a month on location in Parkdale and West Queen West.
“This was a whole different experience,” says Booth of the filming. “It was like a guerrilla shoot, very independent, very bare bones. We didn’t have traffic stops or pedestrian traffic stops, so people would walk in and out of the shots all the time.”
In fact, filming was so informal that a passerby tried to intervene during a particularly emotional scene between Booth and actor Aaron Poole, who plays her boyfriend Johnny.
“That was one experience that I don’t think I’ll ever to be able to let go of,” says Booth. “It was a very intense scene, and a woman riding her bike didn’t see the camera and thought it was a real altercation happening in real life. I don’t think she realized what we were doing, and neither one of us left character.”
Playing Pretty was a challenging process for Booth, who prepared for the role beforehand by delving into the background of her character and interviewing actual prostitutes who were working in the area where the movie was being filmed.
“I did a lot of research based on the fact that I didn’t have any personal experience of drug use,” says Booth. “My character is a crack addict, and she also suffers from bipolar disorder, so I did research on what the effects of that are and the effects of selfmedicating with narcotics, what the drugs do to your system.”
Beyond the clinical research, Booth says having the opportunity to speak with people living in the area proved to be an eye-opening and emotional experience for her.
“It was very informal, just sitting in a coffee shop late at night,” she says. “It was heart wrenching. Having that discussion with the actual people was difficult for me because of course, as an actor, I wanted to ask as many questions as possible and absorb as much information as I could.… It’s such a strange situation. I didn’t want to exploit them. It was essential for me to talk to them, and I am really, really grateful for the people who were willing to talk to me.”
Illustrating her dramatic range, Booth's other film fest role is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Pretty, playing a romantic lead in Martin Gero’s Young People F***ing, a romantic comedy that intertwines the stories of 10 characters over the course of the film.
“It’s about five couples in different stages of relationships, and what it is like at each stage,” says Booth.
As Abby, one half of a monogamous couple experiencing a midrelationship crisis opposite actor and improv comedian Josh Dean, Booth assures us that her storyline will keep audiences entertained.
“Trust me,” she laughs. “I can’t reveal what happens, but it is quite hilarious and a lot of fun.”
Not content to rest on her laurels of acting in a double bill of film fest firsts, Booth is now on location in London, Ont., shooting scenes for the new CBC hockey-based drama M.V.P.
“It’s a glimpse behind the scenes in the lives of NHL players, so it’s a lot of focus on the wives and what goes on and the scandals and the politics,” she says. “I play Connie, who is the love interest of a character on the hockey team, so my storyline is all the wooing and the ups and downs of a couple.”
Booth also recently co-starred with actor Chris O’Donnell in the BBC miniseries The Company, a drama tracing CIA activities through the Cold War and demise of the Soviet Union. She plays the wife of a young CIA agent, who grows suspicious of where her husband’s loyalties lie.
On the rare occasion that Booth has free time these days, she enjoys spending it in her Summerhill neighbourhood where she has lived for the past five years with her husband and their two dogs.
“Our area is a haven for our dogs, with tons of parks, the Dogfather & Co. and the Rosedale Animal Hospital, which is home to the best vets in the city,” she says. “There are so many great little shops and restaurants to chose from in our area. We love going for thin-crust pizza at Café Doria and ice cream at My Favourite Ice Cream Shop.… I never want to leave!”
As for whether she plans to take a break from her hectic schedule anytime soon, Booth says plans for a growing family might tempt her to take some time away from the business.
“My husband and I are looking forward to starting a family. There will be times in the next couple of years where I may take time out from acting to spend with my family, but I’ll keep acting,” she says. “For me, the most important thing I think about, when I think about the future, is that I want to continue to be blessed with a variety of characters and roles that will challenge me because without the challenge there is no point. But ideally, I’d like to be a Jessica Tandy and work until I’m old and grey and never have to retire.” 
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