Star Trek story as promised:
When I was 14, living in Toronto, and just dying to be a professional actress, I decided that the simplest thing was to make the CBC aware of my talents. Once they knew, they'd hire me and I'd become a star. Piece of cake. (Remember - I was 14. What the hell did I know of the real world of show business?)
So I looked under "Canadian Broadcasting Corporation" in the phone book, called and asked what I had to do to act in shows. The bored government operator switched me to the Casting Department. The bored receptionist at that end said, "We'll send you a form. " One of thousands filled out every month, I'm sure.
I waited eagerly for the form which would make me a star. It arrived, I filled it out. I had no headshot - didn't really know what that was - so I sent a school photo. Then I waited for them to call me. And do you know something? About a week later, they did. They asked me to come in for an audition.
Now, I had no idea at the time that this was about as close to a miracle as I was ever to see in my lifetime. I just assumed it was the way things worked.
So I went in. It so happened that they were casting for an episode of FESTIVAL, which was a fabulous weekly hour or hour and a half of top quality drama or musical programming. The best actors, musicians, directors. I'm talking Genevieve Bujold, Glenn Gould, people of that ilk.
For this original drama, THE LABYRINTH, written by Charles Israel (writer of THE MARK) they needed girls around 14 who were in a group home for disturbed kids. I read, I got cast. Just as planned,
So the rehearsals began and I was in heaven. The group home in the play (based on Warrendale, a real place) used the for then modern method of getting the kids to regress back to unhappy abusive childhoods and relive them in a happier way. One method was to take these teenage girls and offer them baby bottles while they were held and comforted by a social worker. Something they never had in childhood. There was a scene which called for just such a moment and the director said, "Girls, who thinks they can do it?" My hand shot up instantly - my moment to shine - and we rehearsed the scene. After the rehearsal, just before it was to be shot, the director said, "Anna doesn't look like she really wants that bottle. Anybody else?" I had no chance to do it again! And I was too new and young to say, "Hey, give me an opportunity to try it your way!" He just picked someone else and she was the one seen in that moment in the film. My first show business heartbreak.
Fast forward many years and I'm an adult, now a writer, in a bookstore, browsing through the Film and Theater section. Suddenly I see "The Labyrinth." I never knew a book existed of the screenplay. I open it up and it's filled with photos of the production -- including one of ME in the arms of the actor playing the social worker as I drink from the baby bottle! They must've taken the photo at the rehearsal -- and now I was forever frozen in time in a book in that moment. Vindication! And what has all this got to do with Star Trek, DR's? The actor playing the social worker, in whose arms the 14-year-old me is guzzling down a baby bottle of milk, was James Doohan, later to be immortalized as Scottie in Star Trek.
