Source : Globe & Mail

Cara Pifko was singing on television at age 7. Two decades and a bevy of credits later, she's at the centre of a new CBC series, MICHAEL POSNER writes

Canada's star-making machinery is a reluctant apparatus, cranky and underused. Every once in a long while, it manages to sputter to life, manufacturing a genuine, homegrown film and television star, but never with marked enthusiasm and seldom with much marketing pizzazz. We prefer to leave that work to the Americans. And so it is that many of the country's finest performing talents head south, where myth making is a national pastime and celebrity idolatry a ritual.

It's much too soon to pin any sort of big-star label on Cara Pifko, a 27-year-old actress most Canadians have never heard of, let alone seen. But if the balky equipment were going to lurch into action on anyone's behalf, she is exactly the sort of young talent it may want to consider.

If you think you do know her name, or her photograph looks familiar, it may be because you saw her this month in Human Cargo, the six-hour CBC-TV miniseries about refugees, in which she played Helen Wade, a relief-agency worker and daughter of a right-wing politician.

But that choice role, it turns out, was merely the warm-up act for a far meatier piece -- as lawyer Alice de Raey in the 13-part Bernard Zukerman-produced series This is Wonderland, reported to have a budget of about $950,000 an episode. The series makes its debut tonight.

Written by Governor-General Award-winner George F. Walker and Dani Romain and set in the seamy poly-cultural universe of Toronto's provincial court system, Wonderland stars Pifko as an inexperienced young criminal lawyer trying to reconcile her idealism with the pragmatic exigencies of the law.

Most young actors would count themselves blessed to land one major TV series. To win two such parts in consecutive years -- one as the character around which the entire series revolves -- is either a remarkable demonstration of serendipity or a testament to her talent. Perhaps both.

"It's been an unbelievable year," Pifko agrees, taking a lunch break from shooting the 11th episode of This is Wonderland last week. "Especially now that Human Cargo has aired. I knew it was special, but I thought it would get buried, not publicized, the way so many other shows have.

"I'm overjoyed about it."

We talked on the Wonderland set, on the site of a former General Electric plant in central Toronto. The producers have built an elaborate to-scale replica of Toronto's Old City Hall, complete with courtrooms, holding cells, faux marble pillars and inlaid mosaic tiles.

Zukerman, winner of eight Gemini Awards for various made-for-TV movies and now making his first series, looked at roughly 70 candidates before settling on Pifko.

"She's not only a wonderful actress, but the soul of the character is in her," he explained on the set of the show last week. "And Alice is really the central role. She's the person through whose eyes we see this bizarre, strange, incredible world of the courts. And the beauty of a series, as opposed to a one-off, is you don't need an established star. If it's any good, you can create a star, so you can look for the best person."

The 70 candidates were eventually whittled down to a long shortlist of 15, including Pifko. But when it came time for a second audition, she was in Cape Town, South Africa, shooting Human Cargo. With some difficulty, she managed to arrange to shoot an audition tape and ship it back.

"We had then planned to do these elaborate final screen tests with makeup and everything, flying in the talent," Zukerman recalls. "But then almost on a whim, we looked at Cara's tape again and I said, 'I don't need the tests. She's our girl.' "

Zukerman had one caveat: He wanted a personal meeting because "whoever we picked had to be the captain of the acting team. And set the tone professionally and emotionally and if that person were a prima donna in any way, . . . well, that's not my style. Life is too short. And she's been the perfect captain. She has the C sewn on her chest."

They met for lunch at Toronto's Bar Italia in July.

"I can't remember what they asked me," laughs Pifko, an upbeat, bright-eyed brunette. "I think I might have blocked it out -- my adrenalin was so high. He talked about family a lot, because that's what we're creating now."

Indeed, although the first episode has not yet gone to air, there is already every expectation that the CBC will commission a second season.

The arc of Pifko's career curve is even more astonishing when you consider that she is barely five years out of Montreal's National Theatre School. But long before acting was even a professional consideration, she was singing on television as a regular on Sharon, Lois & Bram's Elephant Show.

"It wasn't that my parents pushed me. It was quite natural. Sharon is a family friend, so when they were doing their first record, I sang on it. And then when I was 7, they invited me to audition for the TV show. I did it for five seasons."

Her appetite piqued, Pifko majored in drama at Earl Haig, a performing-arts high school in Toronto, and after graduation auditioned successfully for the NTS. The adjustment to Montreal was difficult.

"My first year was living hell," she says. "I was away from my boyfriend" -- writer and director Gareth Bennett, the only boyfriend she's had for the past 12 years -- "for the first time and there I was lying on the floor for hours and hours doing breathing exercises and I couldn't justify why I was there."

She almost quit after the first year, "but I had a very smart teacher there named Joel Miller who advised me to wait until the end of June." That summer, she was the host of Pumped, a sports show for kids. "It wasn't Shakespeare, but somehow I found myself using things I had learned in theatre school. And it was just enough."

That summer, she also moved in with Bennett, "so we finally had a home base." When she returned to school, Pifko would often take the bus back on Saturdays and leave for Montreal again at midnight on Sunday, arriving just in time for Monday's 8 a.m. class.

Since graduating in 1998, she's only been out of work six or seven months. She appeared in the Canadian Stage Company's productions of Picasso at the Lapin Agile, How I Learned to Drive and Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), was part of a two-season run of Our Hero, a CBC comedy series, had TV roles in 1-800 Missing, Blue Murder, The Associates, Twice in a Lifetime, The City, The Royal Diaries and Road to Avonlea, and small parts in five feature films.

For the foreseeable future, of course, her focus is on the law, a subject she admits she knew nothing about a year ago. Since then she's spent hours at Old City Hall observing proceedings, and worked her way through the Coles Notes guide to Canadian law. There's also a full-time lawyer attached to the production as a consultant.

Although she says she won't believe there will be a second season of Wonderland until the shooting starts, it may be her home for some time. And after that? She's already spent one pilot season in Los Angeles and from a standing start -- no agent, no representation -- landed 30 auditions and three call-backs. Now, with Human Cargo and Wonderland, Canada's creaky star-making machinery may begin to hum and whirr on her behalf. It will be interesting to see whether it finishes the job and, if it does, whether we can keep her.

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