Avalanche rescues, police chases and standoffs with serial killers. It’s all in a night’s work for Rebecca Marshall. The Canadian actor is currently working a grinding schedule of back-to-back night shoots, filming the third season of CBC-TV’s adventure airline series Arctic Air.
The late nights haven’t been so tough to handle though since, as she says, she’s been working through intense storylines with an incredible cast and crew. “I’ve never done anything like this before in my career,” she says. “It’s extreme adventure."
“The cast and directors have been incredible,” she adds. “They’ve been like family.”
The show, starring Canadian actors Adam Beach and Pascale Hutton, is known for raw rescue scenes and dramatic storylines set amid the stark, rugged landscape of the Northwest Territories. Marshall says the adventure and drama goes even further in season three, premiering on Jan. 7.
“They really step it up,” she says.
Marshall was brought on board the Yellowknife-based series to play officer Lindsay Gallagher, a cop new to the force who’s working with the maverick airline Arctic Air to start up a search and rescue department.
Aside from the day-to-day issues a police officer in the Canadian north has to confront, like mountain rescues and hazardous working conditions, Marshall says her character — a “tough cop with a sensitive streak” — also has to deal with a fear of flying. Marshall says it’s a quality she and her character have in common.
“It’s a mixture of realizing how confined you are and how high you are and that you have no control over the situation,” she says about what sparks her anxiety. Though being a nervous flyer has never held Marshall back from travelling, she says she has taken measures such as sitting in the pilot’s cabin to try and calm her nerves. “It didn’t help,” she says with a chuckle.
The Toronto native grew up in East York and attended Leaside High School. She was raised by her mother, who she says instilled in her and her siblings a taste for adventure. “We lived very adventurously,” she says. “My mom did the best she could. We moved around a lot. We joke in our family that we lived in every subway stop area along the Danforth.”
Marshall says one thing that was constant in her life was her goal of being an actor. “I always knew I wanted to act,” she says. “I’ve always been a performer.”
When she was only 12, she wrote her own version of The Wizard of Oz, based on the original movie, and gave the script to her Grade 6 teacher who, in turn, produced it. Marshall starred as Dorothy. “It’s one of the best childhood memories I have,” she says.
When Marshall started auditioning for roles professionally, she made it a priority to attend acting classes and learn as much about her craft as possible. “It’s always been so important for me to train,” she says. “[Acting] is like playing an instrument — you have to practise,” she says.
Now based in Los Angeles (she moved there 10 years ago at the encouragement of a Toronto acting agent), she has landed parts in such notable TV series as The West Wing, CSI: Miami, and the sci-fi action series Threshold, starring Peter Dinklage. A part in Saw 3D — the final installment of the hugely successful horror movie franchise — helped push Marshall’s career into silver screen territory.
She recently finished shooting the horror-comedy film Cooties with actor Elijah Wood of The Lord of the Rings fame, about an elementary school hit by a virus that turns prepubescent students into flesh-ripping zombies. Marshall plays Emily Dopkins, a suburban mom and head of the PTA, and Wood portrays a substitute teacher trapped in the school. “It’s hysterically funny and gory, and Elijah is fabulous in it,” Marshall says.
Penned by Saw writer Leigh Whannell and Glee co-creator Ian Brennan, the movie also stars comic actors Rainn Wilson (The Office) and Jack McBrayer (30 Rock). Set for release in late 2014, Cooties has already been generating cult-classic buzz. Marshall says she is thrilled to be part of such a talented team.
She’s also excited about her role in the horror action film Raze, opening in theatres in early January. Marshall describes the movie as “basically a female fight club” in which women are forced to fight for their lives using their bare hands. “It’s an uber-violent popcorn movie,” Marshall says. The actress performed all of her own stunts and got in shape for her role by training with a professional boxer, undergoing intense workouts and learning fight choreography every day, five days a week before the shoot.
“Those were tortuous days,” she says. Shooting the fight scenes was even tougher. “I have a great respect for stunt people,” she says.
Although it’s an actor’s dream to be so busy with film and television work, Marshall says that it’s crucial for her to pursue her own creative interests on the side, especially since show business can be so unpredictable. “There are times as an actor you don’t work for a year, so I think as an artist you need to find another source as your creative outlet,” she says. When Marshall has down time, she paints and writes from her home in L.A. “I believe people should have passion projects so you’re not always relying on other people to employ you,” she adds.
Not one to wait for work to come to her, she formed her own production company, Moxie Lady Productions, and she recently produced the independent documentary-style thriller Life Tracker in which she co-stars along with American actor Matt Dallas. The film is about what transpires when a device is invented that can predict a person’s lifespan.
Another “passion project” she has involved herself in is charity work in Kenya where she helps out at an orphanage for elephants when a break in her work affords her time to visit. She says her experiences there have been life changing and she looks forward to returning. “I fell in love with the animals,” she says. But for now, Marshall seems quite content to be doing the late nights on Arctic Air.
“It’s nice to be back in Canada and doing a Canadian series because it all started here,” she says.
