“I kind of see myself as a cartoon that's on its way to becoming a real person that has to find that special amulet or mushroom to get to that next realm or level. I don't feel like anything is that tangible. It freaks me out, why I feel unhappy or conflicted and why that can change on a dime. I feel very manic right now, but I'm confident where I am.”
Assets:
Eyes, lips, butt, hair
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Overview
A Canadian actress with a strikingly beautiful face, rail-thin figure and personable manner, Carly Pope first gained prominence in 1999 as high school outsider Sam McPherson in "Popular." Although the show was cancelled after two seasons, the energetic Pope has remained busy in movie and TV projects in the US and Canada.
Career
Carly had an usually fast start to her career, making her American debut in the TV movie I've Been Waiting for You in 1998. That was the same year, she graduated from Lord Byng Secondary School in Vancouver's well-to-do West Point Grey neighborhood. The school, which offers extensive programs in the arts, is also the alma mater of actress Cobie Smulders. Carly was discovered in a school production, an all-female "Odd Couple," and spent the summer filming in Romania.
Carly relocated to Hollywood and auditioned for a role on Roswell. She didn't get that part, and initially sought the role of in-girl Brooke McQueen on Popular. In a bit of conventional casting, that part went to thin blonde Leslie Bibb, while even thinner brunette Carly was chosen as the ostensibly less popular Sam. Both actresses received good notices, along with castmates Sara Rue and Tamara Mello, but Carly's spunk and intelligence attracted particular attention. She capitalized on this with a good performance as Molly White in another TV movie, Trapped In A Purple Haze (2000).
In some ways, her early success was difficult for Carly. When she initially moved to Hollywood, "I, to be quite honest, freaked out," Carly said in an interview with the lesbian magazine Curve. "I rebelled against my environment. I was coming fresh out of high school, had just started university and was eager to be studious and academic, and then I get cast in this WB teen angst show in Hollywood. I moved down there. So I was all of the sudden a part of this world that I knew nothing about in this career that I didn’t know I wanted to have. I started getting really wary about the people that I was hanging out with and what they wanted from me, because I felt that everybody wanted something," she said.
Acting can be a tough gig. While seldom lacking for work since then, Carly has as yet been unable to find a break-out role, bouncing from significant parts in minor projects to insignificant parts in major ones. She had a bit part in Orange County, and played a girlfriend in Finder's Fee.The nadir may have been the awful Al Pacino/Matthew McConaughey vehicle Two for the Money in 2005, where Carly appeared in a number of scenes but had only a couple of lines, essentially serving as wallpaper. She did kiss McConaughey in a scene that for some reason brought to mind Susan Saint James and Rock Hudson. Similarly, Pope recently had a small role as yet another victim on the American torture-fest 24, making her the latest ostensibly progressive actor to accept work on this right-wing agit-prop in order to pay the rent.
Not surprisingly, Carly often has been better than the material. She and Sara Rue reunited for the TV movie This Time Around (2003). In 2004, Pope won a best supporting actress Leo for her work as Maya Kandinsky in the Canadian series The Collector, but left after one season. In 2005, Carly was featured in Vancouver-based director Larry Kent's black comedy The Hamster Cage about a nastily dysfunctional family. While it did some business on the festival circuit, winning Carly an award in Vancouver, the subject matter prevented it from getting general release or even a DVD. Playing the 20-something girlfriend of a 60-something man, Carly spent her time in a school uniform that emphasized her extremely youthful physique.
"It all seemed supremely perverse," Pope told the Montreal Mirror. "I just really wanted to be a part of it. It's rare when filmmakers really push the boundaries quite like that."
Doing more with less, Carly won another Leo for her work in 2006 on one of her short "Sandra" films, Sandra Gets Dumped and Sandra Goes to Whistler aka "Sandra Gets F*cked," which are readily available on YouTube.
Carly next raised the heat on the US cable show, Dirt, appearing in several episodes as lesbian drug dealer Garbo. Pope was especially energetic in a love scene with her polar opposite, voluptuous blonde Laura Allen as vulnerable starlet Julia Mallory. Swinging the other way, she followed in 2008 with a briefer and less heated appearance as one of David Duchovny's conquests on Californication.
Unfortunately, Carly Pope's major 2007 movie, the extravagantly titled Young People F*cking, attracted more attention in Ottawa than it did in movie theatres. A mild, 90-minute sex comedy, the movie does feature a brief topless appearance by the tiny, tiny Carly, who could pass for a very young teen. Several other cast members have longer exposures, but played for humour and with no hint of genitalia. Despite this mild content, the heavy-handed title outraged some parliamentarians and busybodies, leading to a debate over government support for the arts. The furor scared off mainstream audiences even when the title was expurgated to YPF. In the fundamentalist United States, the movie essentially went direct to video, with a festival-only box office of less than $10,000.
Carly's 2007 lesbian comedy Itty Bitty Titty Committee also had a narrow audience, but did well on the festival circuit. Despite mixed reviews and extremely limited crossover to mainstream audiences, it attracted some devoted fans and her role as the group leader helped maintain Carly's high profile in the les community.
Carly divides her time between Hollywood and Vancouver, where the semi-thriving industry has enabled her to work in ventures such as Sci-Fi's Yeti with her brother Kris. Warning: In the tradition of the channel's Saturday night movies, exposure to Yeti actually kills brain cells (which might explain the channel's decision to call itself Syfy). In 2008, Carly appeared in one segment of the anthology-style movie Toronto Stories, which played primarily in Canada.
In early 2009, Carly was added to the ensemble of Day One, a post-apocalyptic drama from former Heroes writer Jesse Alexander, which was greenlighted by NBC as a telemovie/pilot. The show has generated buzz split between anticipation and criticism that it amounts to Jericho Junior. Advance publicity describes Carly's character as a "girlfriend," never a good sign. In the summer of 2009, NBC executives said the show might simply run as a 13-episode mini-series in early 2010. After taking the role, Carly told the vancouverisawesome.com website that she is waiting to see what happens with the show, but understands that it's a job.
"'Everything has it’s ups and downs and when I’ve gotten conflicted about being in the industry, I’ve often felt like I’ve wanted to jump ship," she said. "I think it’s common _ especially as an actor _ to feel entitled and take for granted that it just is what it is. It’s also common, I think, to have things massively built up into being more than what they really are. The INDUSTRY’s a business." Acting is "one aspect,"' she continued, but added that "still requires you to participate in thoughtful and responsible ways (for me anyway) to feel somewhat satisfied and more in control of my reality."
Personal
Carly Pope is half Italian, a quarter Yugoslavian and a quarter Irish. She two brothers, one older and one younger, Kris and Alex. Carly attended a French/English elementary school, and speaks French, Spanish and Italian. She attended one semester at the University of British Columbia, which provided settings for the independent film Various Positions (2002), where she played the love interest and showed her chest nuts in a bedroom scene.
Carly is good-humoured enough to poke fun at her absence of cleavage, telling this story about her graduation from Lord Byng: "At my graduation, I wore an outfit that didn't fit my physique well. I had on a tube top under a blazer, and as I was walking across the stage, the tube slid down to my waist. I covered myself up, so nobody actually saw it fall. But when I got back to my seat, I had to maneuver the tube back up, and my friends were all laughing at me."
For what it's worth, Ralph Garman, who had a bit part in Two for the Money, is quoted on the blog of the Kevin and Bean show that while he did not score with female lead Rene Russo, "Carly Pope, however, I shagged rotten!"
In her free time in Vancouver, Carly has volunteered at a women's reproductive rights center and earned a certificate in counseling.
YPF may not have done big box office, but it did earn Carly one of the nominations for "best abs" from digitalminx.com. Kristen Bell won the award.
Stuff she’s done, ie: movies, tv, albums:
A Girl's Guide to Kissing and Other Nightmares in Teenland, Aliens in the Wild, Wild West, Popular, Snow Day, Trapped in a Purple Haze, Finder's Fee, The Glass House, Orange County, Various Positions, Nemesis Game, This Time Around, Intern Academy, The Collector, Two for the Money, Recipe for a Perfect Christmas, Apocalypse, Dirt, Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Beneath, Young People Fucking, Last Resort, Taken, 24, Californication
Dudes she has worked with:
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