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Snow princess

With a starring role in The Snow Walker, Annabella Piugattuk is ready for the red carpet

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Igloolik’s Annabella Piugattuk was first spotted by a casting director at a Friday-night dance in the community. "I saw this cute guy. It looked like he was checking out all the girls," she says.

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(PHOTOS BY KIRSTEN MURPHY)

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PATRICIA D’SOUZA

Annabella Piugattuk says she doesn’t want to be treated like a star. She’s still not accustomed to being asked for her autograph and she’s not used to being noticed on the street by people she’s never met. It really doesn’t happen all that often, she says — she isn’t famous yet.

But she will be.

Soon, Piugattuk, 19, will be on the big screen in theatres across Canada and around the world as Konala, the female lead role in The Snow Walker.

Piugattuk picks berries in Iqaluit before returning to Igloolik for a well-deserved break from filming.

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The film is the screen adaptation of Walk well, my brother, a short story in Farley Mowat’s 1975 compilation The Snow Walker. It is scheduled for release in late 2003.

In it, Konala is a tuberculosis-stricken Inuit woman and the passenger of qallunaaq pilot Charlie Lavery, played by Barry Pepper. When the plane crashes on the western coast of Hudson Bay, Konala helps Lavery survive through cold and hunger.

"She’s strong like me," Piugattuk says. "I think I’m pretty strong. She’s really shy. She knows that she’s dying."

With very little dialogue, the pair’s growing relationship is depicted mostly through body language — the true test of an actor.

But Piugattuk had no training as an actor, she admits. Actually, before this past May, she hadn’t even heard that a casting company was holding auditions throughout Nunavut. Her mother told her the company’s scout was in Igloolik.

CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
On her way to Vancouver for her final audition, Piugattuk told relatives in Iqaluit, "I’m going to be a rich bitch."

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Shortly thereafter, she took home a copy of Nunatsiaq News and read a story about Jared Valentine, casting director for the Vancouver agency, Valentine Casting.

"I was really interested," she says.

Her mother told her company representatives were handing out short scripts for the audition. "She said, ‘Go pick up that script.’" Piugattuk says. "She was almost forcing me to get it."

She took the script home and memorized it.

"Friday night came and I was at a dance with friends," she says. "I saw this cute guy. It looked like he was checking out all the girls."

It was Valentine.

"We were dancing. Then the music stopped and we went to the lobby. He was standing there and looking at every girl. He gestured to me to come over." Piugattuk motions with her arm, mimicking the casting director.

Of Konala, the character she plays in The Snow Walker, Piugattuk says, "She’s strong like me. I think I’m pretty strong. She’s really shy. She knows that she’s dying."

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Valentine handed Piugattuk a script. She said she already had one.

That Sunday, she went to IBC’s Igloolik station for her audition. "There were quite a few girls there," she says. After the audition, she said goodbye to Valentine and left. He returned to Vancouver.

That could have been the end of the story, but a week later, Valentine called Piugattuk and told her she was chosen as one of eight finalists. He asked her to come to Vancouver for another audition.

While passing through Iqaluit on the way to the west coast, she told relatives, "I’m going to be a rich bitch."

In Vancouver, she found she knew two of the girls in the final round: Lucy Tulugarjuk, who attained international acclaim in the role of Puja in Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat, and singer/songwriter Lucy Idlout.

Canadian favourite Susan Aglukark was also called in for a private audition.

"I was really nervous," Piugattuk says. "I didn’t know the character at first." She was asked to perform a scene in front of the film’s director, producers, and sound, lighting and camera crews.

"We are at a camp, sitting near a tent. The pilot sees a pelt and asks what it is. I imitate what it is, a siksik — a squirrel. And I fed him a piece of meat." With that small scene, she showed her star potential.

A few days before filming was scheduled to start in July, Piugattuk got the call. "It’s amazing. It’s crazy," she smiles, recalling what it felt like to find out she got the part. "I was really overwhelmed. I auditioned just for the fun of it. I didn’t think I was going to get the part."

However, over lunch at Iqaluit’s Frobisher Inn after a month of filming in Churchill, Manitoba, and two weeks in Rankin Inlet, Piugattuk admits that being in a movie is more difficult than she thought it would be. "I didn’t know it was going to be this hard — mentally and physically tiring."

One of the hardest parts, she says, was having to wake up at 6 a.m. each day for an hour of hair and makeup — even though her character wears no makeup and the same simple costume in almost every scene.

In addition, she was cautioned against eating junk food. "I’m dying in this character and I have to be skinny."

With a two-month break until shooting begins again in November, the temptation to stray from those instructions is strong. "I haven’t had junk food in a while. When I got here, the first thing I bought was potato chips."

But she knows she can’t stray too far. "In the winter scenes, I’m actually dying and I want to be a little thinner. But I’m not going to starve myself," she says.

"I’ll be doing a lot of exercises, eating healthy food like meat — I miss eating country food."

On set, the only time she ate country food was in front of the camera. Even her co-star Barry Pepper, the actor playing Charlie Lavery, ate raw caribou, she says.

Canadian-born Pepper is best known for his roles in Saving Private Ryan and Battlefield Earth.

"He’s funny. He’s really amazing," Piugattuk says. "I have a picture of him he signed and it says, ‘Walk well, my sister.’ He’s really handsome in that picture."

Piugattuk formed a bond with cast and crew, including director Charles Martin Smith, whose credits include American Graffiti and The Untouchables, and producer John Houston.

When shooting on the $8.5-million film wrapped up temporarily in late August, she was sad to leave. She says she doesn’t know how she’s going to adjust to life in Igloolik after her taste of stardom. "I think I might go to Montreal to go to school," she says.

But for now, Piugattuk is looking forward to going home to Igloolik, to lifting her three-year-old sister in her arms, and teasing her little brothers.

One thing’s for sure — The Snow Walker is only the beginning for her.

"It’s my first one. And it’s a big one."

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