Lacombe actor AnnaMarie Lea is biting into a juicy role — the part of identical twins in an indie movie being shot in Calgary.
Lea will have double the fun playing Myrna and Verna in a revenge thriller, called In Plainview, starring Shaun Johnston of Ponoka (Heartland), and Aaron Douglas (Battlestar Galactica)
The identical twins will work at a local diner and confuse both the good and the bad guys who drop in to question them about a crime.
“It’s so exciting,” said Lea, who looks forward to her three-day shoot next week.
While the local actor has appeared in many previous movies and TV serials, including Death Race with Jason Statham and MacGyver, Lea had taken time off from auditioning to raise her four children while running and acting in her professional Cow Patti Theatre for 20 years.
Now that her children are older, Lea has signed back on with Characters Talent Agency (the same agency she had been with while working as a professional actor in Vancouver in the 1980s).
“I still want to be a movie star,” joked Lea, who admits that as much as she loves the stage, she occasionally yearns to be on the big screen. “You watch the Oscars and think, I want to be there! … It’s kind of silly but we all have these things…”
After Lea auditioned for In Plainview, she was asked to perform a call-back audition over Skype because she was visiting her daughter in Switzerland at the time. “That was a first for me,” said the Calgary-born woman, who was told she landed the role because she was convincing as a rural woman.
It’s a part Lea is very familiar with. She’s residing for a dozen years in Lacombe (from 1996-2002, then again in 2010-2016), and spent the stretch in between living near Cornwall, Ont., where her pilot husband had been transferred for work.
In Plainview, set in small-town Alberta, is about a dirty ex-cop who’s out for revenge against his former partner. Lea said she loves the script, which reminds her of quirky movies, such as Fargo.
The indie film is being made with a budget of $250,000. It was nominated by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers for the Telefilm Microbudget Program and was one of three Alberta films chosen for funding this year.
Actors and a technical crew from Alberta and Vancouver are involved in the production. Producer Scott Westby and director Matt Watterworth, from Calgary’s Full Swing Productions, have previously done shorts, a web series and commercials, but this is their first feature-length movie.
When completed, it will be sent to film festivals around the world.
“While a theatrical release would be amazing, the reality is that films of this size are generally released on TV and digitally,” said Westby. He noted Telefilm has been pushing digital and other new models of film distribution “that cater to the new landscape of entertainment.”
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com