By Tina Warren
This girls intense, seductive smoky eyes will lure you to May’s issue of Avenue Canada. With strategically tousled hair, a stern pout and a pose that screams “I’m ready for anything,” actress Sara Canning is letting everyone know she has arrived. In a telling interview, she dives into discussing her quick rise to fame, no-failure attitude and obsession with the paranormal.
The undead might scare some people away but not Sara, which is why there couldn’t have been a better show to have catapulted her to fame than The CW’s "The Vampire Diaries." Sara plays Jenna Sommers, the aunt and legal guardian of Jeremy and Elena, who all exist in a world where vampires and humans are entangled in one another’s lives (and sometimes just each other). But if you think her relationship with the undead is a new found hobby, think again. She laughingly recalled to the mag of her childhood, “I would creep into the living room and hide behind the couch to watch ['The X-Files']. I would scare myself. I had a really overactive imagination.”
Before her success on "Vampire Diaries," Sara called Sherwood Park in Canada home. Starring in some middle school stage productions, she was bitten by the infamous acting bug. Later, this same bug caused her to leave the university she was attending to move to Vancouver and pursue acting: one passion Sara knew she needed to cultivate. "Nothing really fueled my fire the way performing did. So I [asked myself], ‘why can’t I do this?'"
While in Vancouver, she landed the role of Nicky Hilton in "Paparazzi Princess: The Paris Hilton Story," a theme she’s now become familiar with herself. Sara’s quickly learned about how vicious paparazzi and tabloids can be with any scandal. During a "Vampire Diaries" photo shoot with her female costars on top of a bridge, motorists made phone calls claiming unruly girls were hanging out on the bridge, flashing people. Although all charges were dismissed, the story hit the tabloids full force. Sara just brushes it off though, “My friends and family all automatically called me, laughing, because they know I’m the last person in the world who would do something like that.”
And what type of person is Sara exactly? She still cares about her hometown, sending autographs to her former high school for their silent auction. And she’s also incredibly driven about going after her dreams. She confided to the magazine, “When I moved away from home … there was no thought in my head of maybe this is going to work out. I was always really adamant about making this happen.”
Check out the full article in Avenue complete with edgy photos and a list of five things Sara loves about her hometown (Spoiler: #4 is the sky)!
Are you a fan of Sara's character on "Vampire Diaries"? What types of storylines do you hope to see her embroiled in?
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