Profile: Arlene Duncan

By Susan Ponting

There sure are a lot of shenanigans going on among Hollywood actors lately. Recently Charlie Sheen and Randy Quaid have taken centre stage. And Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson and Michael Richards come to mind.

So why don’t our Canadian actors go bonkers? I’m talking about actors living and working here in Canada. Can you see Arlene Duncan (who we’ll hear from in a moment), Paul Gross, Sarah Polley, and Colm Feore’s mug shots on TMZ after a night of boozing, and speeding down Yonge Street along Lakeshore in their Lamborghini’s?

The Canadian Bureau Chief of the Hollywood Reporter, Etan Vlessing says, “I once asked Christopher Plummer, a hell-raiser in his own day, why so many young actors were flaming out, while he and so many of his colleagues enjoyed longevity. Discipline. He said they may have been drinking and carousing, but they worked hard and hard work was demanded of them. They also worked within a studio system that kept a tight rein on actors. Today, their agents oversee their careers, and they’re more likely to enable them than guide them in crisis.” Vlessing cites another important factor, “The Internet means bad behavior can no longer be shielded like it could be a generation ago.” Said Vlessing.

Veteran freelance celebrity reporter, Natasha Stoynoff, a Canadian writer living in New York City says, “Canada has a sobering influence on a person. Canadians are taught to be polite and quiet. Americans are taught the opposite. America allows self-expression, even their nuttiness.”

Stoynoff says it’s a completely different world being a celebrity in the U.S. than in Canada, “If you’re famous here you are constantly being followed by cameras, you make more money, the stakes and pressures are higher.” Take Charlie Sheen as an example Stoynoff says, “If you‘re an actor, you'll also be dramatic about it. Charlie Sheen isn't going to hide away. That's not the American spirit!”

It’s more about the craft in Canada; and gratitude, modesty, discipline, and hard work. And then again, it’s so difficult just to get a gig here, there’s good reason our actors are humble.

Arlene Duncan is one such grateful and determined actor.

Although she’s had her share of set backs, including a serious emergency appendectomy just a couple of weeks ago; this multi-talented performer, with her contagious laugh and radiant smile, doesn’t let much get in her way.

Against a lot of odds Duncan has made her living as a Canadian performer.

Duncan says, “We don’t indulge celebrity here like they do in the U.S. We hardly acknowledge our performers let alone indulge them! Actors here don’t survive if they take the kind of chances actors in Hollywood do. Here in Canada, we’re more artists than celebrities. We’re busy just working to have a career.”

Duncan has just signed on for a sixth season of Little Mosque on the Prairie, the sitcom about Canadian Muslims living in a fictional town in Saskatchewan. She plays ‘Fatima’ who she says is, “A free-spirited, loud, gregarious, fun loving, and shoot-straight-from-the-hip-and-gets-away-with-it kind of woman!”

She’s ecstatic and realistic about the show being renewed for another season and says, “The show is a blessing to me. I love my character. Who knows where the writers are going to take us? Now that Rayyan, (Sitara Hewitt)and Amaar, (Zaib Shaikh) have married it will be interesting to see how the characters all relate. We never know from one season to the next if it will be renewed.”

She’s philosophical about show business in Canada, “This is a precarious business, but actors are used to beginnings and endings – we’re always waiting. Anybody who works in the arts is constantly prepared for something to end. That’s just the way we live.”

And so like many other Canadian performers Duncan constantly reinvents herself, “I don’t limit my work to just film and TV. I love to design clothes and work in theatre productions, I do a lot of voice over work, and I sing in bands and musicals.”

After that emergency appendectomy Duncan had to cancel one of her singing gigs, but an upcoming tribute to the music of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now, on May 1st at the Bathurst Street Theatre is still on. She jokes, “I will be taking my wacky post-appendectomy self onto the stage with several of our most talented musical theatre treasures for this very exciting event!”

As our Canadian actors slog it out in Hollywood North, just a week after her surgery, Duncan’s Facebook post said it all;

“Woke up this morning feeling extremely thankful: After spending a week in hospital after a ruptured appendix, thankful that God thought he'd keep this ‘ole girl around a little longer-thankful to be here in Canada, thankful for my 20 yr-old looking doctors and the plethora of lovely medical folk who took such good care of me, thankful for the love of family and friends and now thankful to be home...and thankful for Oxycontin...it's a helluva drug! :-)