Like the characters that made her famous, Shenae Grimes-Beech also had a local high school hangout, though it was a bit different than the Peach Pit on 90210 or the Dot café on Degrassi: The Next Generation.
Grimes-Beech — who grew up in Forest Hill — chuckles over the phone from Los Angeles and explains that her spot was the Pizza Pizza at Eglinton and Bathurst. It was a place, Grimes-Beech says, where she and her friends would go simply to be somewhere. “You’re at that age where you want to go out, but you can’t really go anywhere just yet, so that was where my friends and I could congregate and hang out.”
Grimes-Beech, who attended nearby Forest Hill Collegiate, also remembers frequenting an old school diner in Forest Hill Village where she and other classmates would go every day for gravy and fries.
Now based in Los Angeles, hanging out in diners or cafés for the Canadian celeb often means also being photographed by the paparazzi.
Fame happened fast for Grimes-Beech, who was an actor based in Toronto when — at the age of 18 — she landed the role of Annie Wilson on 90210, the CW spinoff of the ’90s teen soap and cultural sensation.
Grimes-Beech was cast as a teen who moves from Kansas to Beverly Hills with her family (similar to the Shannen Doherty character in the original series), and within about two weeks the actress herself had relocated to Hollywood where she starred on the show for its entire five seasons.
Up to that point, Grimes-Beech was known to Canadian audiences as Darcy Edwards, a troubled student on Degrassi: The Next Generation, a role she played for four seasons and for which she won a Gemini.
Grimes-Beech says that although she didn’t plan for an acting career, she always felt compelled to show off and be the centre of attention. She also loved to dance, and so her mom enrolled her — at the age of 13 — in the weekly triple threat program at the Randolph Academy for the Performing Arts at Bathurst and Bloor.
It was after one of her showcases there that an agent approached her (the same agent that still represents her to this day), and she began going on professional auditions.
When she landed a commercial, she says, she had the realization that she could make a living out of performing. “I thought, ‘I can get paid to do something fun and amazing.’”
But, she says, she didn’t truly start to learn her craft until she got the role on Degrassi. “It was an actor’s boot camp,” she says about working on the show. “We worked fast and produced a lot of content, and I was able to learn about my process.”
She was also part of a talented creative team that included Aubrey Drake Graham, a young actor/rapper also from Forest Hill, who has since exploded onto the world music scene. “Degrassi was a coming of age passage that Toronto-based actors strived to be a part of,” she says.
But while Degrassi helped Grimes-Beech hone her acting skills, she says that nothing could have prepared her for the attention she would receive in moving to Hollywood as the star of a much-anticipated spinoff series.
“I wish someone had warned me,” Grimes-Beech says. “Everyone comes out here and wants this but — I’m not going to lie — it was hard.”
“At 18, having a lot of s*** said about you — and I’m out [in Los Angeles] on my own. It was a big reality check, but I’m glad it all happened — it made me stronger,” she says.
Grimes-Beech says the hype and media craze that surrounded her when the show premiered made her reclusive for a time. She says she got through it by working hard and venting to her mom back home in Toronto each day on the phone.
It wasn’t until she met her now-husband, British musician Josh Beech, that she began to feel more at peace with her life in Los Angeles. “Meeting him felt so awesome,” she says. “To have a real connection and real laughs … it made me see what happiness is and that it doesn’t have to be associated with a career.”
Grimes-Beech and Beech met at a mutual friend’s get-together in New York and had an instant connection. “I’ve never laughed so hard with someone and felt so challenged — I have a dry sense of humour and a mouth on me, and he is sharp and witty and unafraid to put me in my place.” After a few lengthy long distance phone calls, Beech moved to Los Angeles, and Grimes-Beech says they are rarely apart.
The couple were married just over a year ago at a Tudor manor in the English countryside near London. Grimes-Beech wore a black Vera Wang wedding dress.
She and Beech document their lives and their interests — namely music and fashion — through the blog they share, aptly titled Two Halves. Grimes says working together creatively in this way has been a learning experience for both of them.
“It makes you grow as a couple on a personal level to be able to compromise. And it’s been fun for us — we’re always coming up with ideas and going on tangents and cutting each other off. ”
Grimes-Beech recently brought Beech to see where she grew up in Toronto. She’s also visiting here more often since she’s been appointed the brand ambassador for the Canadian beauty line Annabelle Cosmetics. “I was so excited when that opportunity arose — I grew up always going to Shoppers and getting the eyeliner, so I have a sense of nostalgia connected to the brand,” she says.
As well as recent work on films such as Scream 4 and a Lifetime Movie Network project entitled Final Exam (Grimes-Beech plays a woman who has lost her short-term memory), she has also begun exploring another passion of hers — the world of fashion — completing an internship at Teen Vogue in the not-so-distant past.
With Grimes-Beech’s success at an early age it would be understandable if she remained in Hollywood, but she says she harbours a dream to one day return to Canada to continue her career.
“Canada has so much to offer and is so true to its talent. [The Canadian industry] doesn’t try to change artists into what will sell. I respect that.”
