Tatiana Maslany
Tatiana Maslany
Tatiana Gabriele Maslanyis a Canadian actress. She has starred in television series such as The Nativity, Being Erica, Heartland, and Orphan Black. In 2013, she won an ACTRA for her role as Claire in the film Picture Day, and a Phillip Borsos Award for her performance in the film Cas & Dylan. Other notable films starring Maslany are Diary of the Dead and Eastern Promises, the latter of which she narrated...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionTV Actress
Date of Birth22 September 1985
CityRegina, Canada
CountryCanada
I started out as a dancer as a kid; I've been dancing since I was 4. So, performing was always part of what I was. I don't know if it I enjoyed the response I got from people or if I liked having an audience, but there's something in me that wanted to perform.
I wanted to get everything right. I was super nerdy and academic. I got so much satisfaction out of getting good grades.
Comedy scares me a lot. I feel like it's way harder than drama. I think my safety net is definitely drama, and I would love to kind of be able to be able to push into the comedy world and do something kind of like a Christopher Guest kind of style show. That, to me, is my kind of comedy. Like, Ricky Gervais comedy. That's my kind of thing.
You learn from the actors that you're working with.
We do long-form-style improv. Our focus was characters and telling a long arc story over about an hour and a half. It was closer to a one-act play than one-off sketches.
I'm incredibly close to my family. I have two younger brothers; they're both artists and actors, and their work and the way they see the world inspires me.
For me, comedy literally is way more terrifying than doing drama, so it's always about stretching what I think I can do and putting myself out there in different context.
I'm a huge 'Futurama' fan, so that's my closest sci-fi tendency.
It's the reason we go to films and watch television: to escape the mundane nature of life and see another world and see ourselves in that other world. I think that's what sci-fi does so well.
My mom's a translator, my dad's a woodworker; that's the world I grew up in, that's the world I'm most comfortable in. The whole idea of Hollywood or any of that other stuff that unfortunately goes along with film, that wasn't part of my upbringing, thankfully.
Going back is a nice way to give definition to each of the characters because they are so vastly different. I would never want them to get blended together.
I have trouble sleeping, at the end of the night. There's a lot of stimulus and my brain is processing a lot of different arcs and personalities. I'm always processing things, so I don't sleep.
I'm at the transition place myself, still playing high school girls but moving to a stage when I'm playing older roles and going to the places of stillness and wisdom and knowledge and weight. It's exciting and scary.
Clothing and makeup and hair and all of that so much indicates the kind of person you are inside and the person you are presenting on the outside. Sometimes they are in conflict, and sometimes they are the same. That psychology of the exterior informing the interior is just so interesting.