Pickle Barrel
ONCE IN A while, a movie comes
along that changes people's lives.
Four Sheets to the Wind certainly
did that for Tamara Podemski.
The North York-born-and-raised
actor, singer-songwriter and
dancer plays the lead female role
in the American indie drama, one
of 16 competition films entered at
the esteemed Sundance Film
Festival earlier this year.
Podemski enjoyed eight days at the festival but left for Toronto before it ended to resume teaching dance. Fortunately for her, she was stuck at the Denver airport when she got a call on her cellphone that changed everything. "Toronto was snowed in … they said, 'Switch terminals. You have to fly back to Sundance because they just gave you the Special Jury Prize for Acting.'"
"It was incredibly emotional," Podemski says, "because I was at a point where I was just feeling so unrecognized by my peers and by the industry that I was ready to just accept maybe I'm only going to have a role every few years."
Sundance doesn't give out the award every year. Something that makes the kudos even sweeter.
Receiving the prize for her performance makes Podemski the first Canadian and the first aboriginal Canadian actor to ever receive such an honour.
"You don't know what your potential is until you really push yourself further than you've ever pushed yourself before," she says. "I had no idea that I could deliver on that level. It goes down in my books as the project that cracked me open as an artist and also as a mature woman."
The prestigious win for her physical and emotional turn in her first onscreen lead role completely surprised and shocked Podemski, even though she has exercised her acting muscles, onstage and the big and small screens, in numerous productions over the years. Remember The Rez, and Bruce McDonald's Dance Me Outside in the '90s? At 20 years old, she performed as a member of the original Toronto cast of Rent before going on to take the New York production's lead role on Broadway for two years.
Podemski showed talent from a young age. As a child she auditioned for and got into the Claude Watson School for the Performing Arts, where she studied theatre, dance and music for 10 years, graduating at 18. "I owe everything of where I am right now to that school. It's a phenomenal program." says Podemski.
She majored in her great love, dance. At 17, she flew to Israel on her own dime to audition for her favourite company, the internationally renowned Batsheva modern dance company. Failing the audition was an eyeopening experience.
But having studied at Claude Watson, and growing up familiar with showbiz, there was no romanticization of what the business was.
"I think that's the greatest kind of armour that I acquired at a very young age," she says.
Podemski's father came to Canada from Israel and her mother is Ojibway from Regina, Man. Raised in both parents' cultures, she is equally at home smudging or holding a Seder.
She draws on both of her cultural heritages for strength. "You know that you're the survivor of so many generations before you who went through mass genocide, and you're still here. So it gives you this power. I'm here for a reason," she says. "There are too many grandparents and greatgrandparents who suffered so much, and you're here now, so it just gives you a little extra feel for life."
She is the middle of three sisters, all known for their careers in the performing arts. Her sister Jennifer's last film, Fugitive Pieces, recently opened the Toronto International Film Festival, and sister Sarah has appeared on the television shows Goosebumps and Moccasin Flats.
Podemski's sisters have always been a source of strength for the star. They help inspire her commitment to empowering women.
Her music (she has two albums in Ojibway and one in English) is themed around the idea that, even though life is hard, one can survive and flourish. For a year after she finished shooting Four Sheets to the Wind, she helped women find their freedom and self-expression by teaching dance, including at her own Toronto studio, called Body Alive.
Her Sundance success prompted a move to Los Angeles in June this year, away from the only Toronto neighbourhood she's ever lived in, between Lawrence and Wilson.
"It's funny," she muses, "but I think I've moved into a neighbourhood in Los Angeles that reminds me of Bathurst and Wilson. I heard so many languages there that I need those multi-ethnic sounds and smells and activity around me. I'm not too posh. I do love the finer things in life, but I kind of prefer the moreÑ" she searches carefully and characteristically to find the right words "Ñzero pretension. I was scared to move to L.A. because my aversion to pretension is so strong that I would hate it.
"In the neighbourhood I grew up with," she continues, "people are just who they are, and we're all living beside each other, and it's incredibly modest. I was in the perfect city and the perfect neighbourhood to prep me for any other place in the world. I lived in New York for two years when I did Rent on Broadway, and it was just easy. Also, living by the 401: everyone was always saying how crazy driving in L.A. was, but it's like, no, if you're driving the 401 on a regular basis, you're good to go!"
Her new American neighbourhood may remind her of her North York roots, but it lacks something. "I miss the bagels at Bagel World," she volunteers. "They're meaty."
Since moving to Los Angeles, Podemski has had more auditions in three months than in her last two years north of the border. She's taking dance classes there, as well, despite feeling intimidated by the L.A. dance scene. She also finds the time to tour the film festival circuit with Four Sheets to the Wind, travelling to four continents and 15 cities in nine months.
Her ultimate dream is to choreograph a Broadway show and have her own, larger dance studio. In the meantime, she's writing material for her new album, slated for the end of 2008. Her current album, Tamara, released on her own record label, received three nominations at the Native American Music Awards (known as "The Nammys") in October, and though she didn't win, she'll have another chance for glory in November. She has four nominations at the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards.
Podemski will also dance and sing at the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards on Global and APTN. And her work as a guest star in Rabbit Fall, a new miniseries for APTN and SCN (for which her sister Jennifer is one of the producers), and another guest star spot in New Amsterdam, for Fox, are upcoming on TV.
It's all par for the course for this
down-to-earth young woman who
continually challenges herself
because she believes in the power
of art to help heal and celebrate
life. 
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