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Movies & TV

In memoriam: Alberta Watson, 1955 2015

Alberta Watson died of cancer this weekend, barely two weeks after her 60th birthday.

Though she never quite made it to A-list stardom, Watson will be remembered for an impressive body of work, including plenty of television appearances and key roles in the early films of Michael Mann, David O. Russell, Atom Egoyan and Sarah Polley.

Mann pitted her against Ian McKellen and Scott Glenn in his Day-Glo monster movie The Keep she held her own against her co-stars and the movies incomprehensible script. For Russell, she played Jeremy Daviess imperious mother in the directors first feature Spanking The Monkey.

In The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan cast her alongside Maury Chaykin as parents destroyed by the loss of their child in a schoolbus accident Sarah Polley, who also appeared in that film, tapped Watson to play an empathetic doctor in her own debut feature Away From Her.

She was good. She was always good.

If you saw Watson as an authority figure in shows like 24 and Nikita which is likely how most people saw her you saw an actor who could deliver technical dialogue with proficiency and the tiniest hint of an inner life. If you saw her in movies, though movies like the ones above, or the forgotten 80s films White Of The Eye and Destiny To Order you got a lot more.

She will be missed. It goes without saying, but Im saying it anyway.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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