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Image 1 of 6
The Many Sides of Gabrielle Miller
By Kate Maclennan
Canada's Gabrielle Miller is an international television star, but her most impressive role is one the majority of her fans will never see.
It's ten minutes after ten on a Sunday morning in mid August. Gabrielle Miller has swept quietly into Elixir, the swanky French eatery that flanks Vancouver's posh Opus Hotel, and is apologizing profusely for her tardiness.
She is, technically speaking, late. But ten minutes behind when you're a time-strapped television star juggling two successful series, a frenetic publicity schedule and key roles in a non-profit organization, is like a day early for anyone else. So I forgive her. Its impossible not to when she slips out from beneath her dark Chanel sunglasses, orders an Americano, and begins to burble endearingly.
"Did you meet Shanti yesterday at the photo shoot?" she inquires immediately. "She had such a great time. It takes a long time to get used to sitting still and having someone put stuff on your face, but she looked like a total pro."
Shanti is MIller's big sister by three years. Yesterday's photo shoot was their first together. Shanti's first ever. Miller gushes on. "She's a really delightful, joyful, inspiring, amazing human. her smile lights up the entire room. We'll go out for lunch and we'll roll in and she'll announce to everyone, 'Hi, my name is Shanti Miller and I have Cerebral Palsy.' Then she tells them she's in a wheelchair, which I think is hilarious. She's got such a great sense of humour. She's awesome."
Miller doesn't talk nearly as much about her other, less-famous siblings, Juniper, Willow, Jesse, James or Diva, and no, the MIllers aren't a northern reincarnation of the Pheonix family, although there are notable similarities.
Gabrielle Sunshine Miller was born in Vancouver in 1973. Her father, a poet, worked days at Vancouver's Banyen Books to bring home the vegetarian equivalent of bacon. Her mother, predominantly a homemaker, waited tables and toiled in odd jobs to make ends meet. Thinking of her mom, Miller's face lights up with a memory. "For a while she sold flowers in nightclubs. She'd wear long velvet coats with big hats and veils and feathers and carry big baskets of flowers. She would leave the house looking like she was about to do a great piece of theatre."
Despite their own artistic nuances, neither parent hustled their third-born toward the cutthroat world of cattle call auditions. "They made us all feel like we could do anything, but the main thing was to do whatever made up happy," says Miller. But in retrospect her path appears predetermined.
From early in her childhood, moving was as much a fact of Miller's life as early morning meditation sessions with her father. She pinballed between schools, trying and failing to integrate into the public school system before finally finding a home in the Montessori organization. The eternal New Girl, she was continually forced to surmount painful, bashful barriers. For the introvert Miller, discovering drama at age eight was like finding the door tucked in the back of the proverbial wardrobe. "Acting was a big thing for me,. When I was a little girl I had this inner world and all these fantasy lands that I wasn't comfortable expressing. I was shy to present myself, but suddenly I had an outlet. I got to be all these things and didn't have to take responsibility for it."
In 1988, Miller was attending high school in White Rock, B.C. Shanti, then 18, was living in a group home for people with disabilities. An accident had eradicated the possibility for her to be cared for at home any longer. "It was heartbreaking, absolutely devastating for us," remembers Miller. " When you put someone into a home in those days, you didn't have the kind of input and control as a family that you should. Shanti, she just wanted to be with her family. It was horrible."
The family was adamant that Shanti not live the rest of her life in an extended care hospital. Desperate for another option, The Millers caught wind of a new, Manitoba-based program that aimed to help people who couldn't help themselves integrate into communities. The solution lay in small personal governments called Microboards, groups of committed family and friends who join to create a non-profit society solely for the support of a challenged individual. Several months and a whole lot of government red-tape later, in 1989 B.C.'s first Microboard was created for Shanti. The goals of the Shanti Miller Friendship Society were to procure the finances necessary to pay staff that Shanti required around the clock, and to provide a support network for her that focused on her goals, and her achievements. On the board since she was sweet 16? Miller.
Her family life back on track, by 17, Miller was thinking of herself again, and decided to take courses at the Brock Academy for the Performing Arts in North Vancouver. A string of part-time jobs including housecleaning, retail telemarketing and, yes working at a gas station provided the means to remain enrolled until the acting began to pay for itself.
"One of my first jobs was a potato chip commercial, " recalls Miller. "I had on a big frilly dress with a huge see-through bowl full of cheesies on my head. My teeth were really crooked and the director kept yelling at me, 'What's wrong with you? Smile!' But I wouldn't."
Then came the onslaught of MOW's, and cameos on all the regular suspects from Neon Rider through DaVinci's Inquest until 18, her first break: a starring role in a Victoria-filmed movie called Digger, starring fellow Canuck Leslie Nielson. Yet Gabrielle Miller wasn't a household name until almost a decade later, when fate intervened again.
In 2003 Miller, who had relocated to L.A., happened to be in Vancouver and available to audition for the pilot of a CTV program set in rural Saskatchewan. "It was a total fluke," she says. "I thought okay, I'll go and spend a couple of months in this little town I've never been to and that will be that. Yeah, right!"
Corner Gas was a slam-dunk. The highest rated program in Canadian television history, its first night on air in January 2004 it garnered 1.15 million viewers (it now boasts 1.5 million per episode), second in its time slot only to the legendary, fumbling Friends. Canadians were hooked on the juicy simplicity and sparky comedic drawl that is life in the fictional town of Dog River, Saskatchewan. Miller' character is Lacey, the urban interloper who runs the town's only cafe. "Corner Gas is definitely the role [my family] are most connected to," she says.
Is she like Lacey, then? Miller ponders the question before answering carefully. "It' impossible as a human to be playing a character and not have any connection, but when you play a character long enough it's like they become a part of you, too. It's like, okay, now I'm putting on Lacey," shay says, adding that she's "the worst waitress on the planet."
There may be more of Lacey in Miller than even she knows. At the photo shoot for this magazine her boyfriend, graphic designer A.J. Schepers, wasn't in the studio a full minute before she called out to him from beneath her glamourous '30s makeup and Wayne Clark gown, "Hon, do you want a cup of coffee?"
Miller, who's most happy sans makeup on her days off, nonetheless loves the elegance of the 1930s and 1940s. "Those women all looked very different but were confident and absolutely stunning, " she says. " There are a lot of beautiful women today, but sometimes I look at magazines and everybody looks the same. I'm attracted to unique, strong beauty, and I think they had that down." As does Miller. At least, her viewing public think so.
In 2004, you could turn on the boob tube and find her in no less than three running series (Corner Gas, the dark comedy Robson Arms, and the sci-fi series Alienated), a first for a Canadian actress. These days, she juggles life in Dog River with that in Robson Arms, and continues to read scripts, eagerly waiting to be swept off her feet by a role in a feature film.
Still, Miller's most challenging - and rewarding role to date - remains that of little sister to Shanti. While any celebrity who lends their name to a cause should be applauded, Miller volunteers more than just her famous face. With her sleeves already rolled up and her arms shoulder-deep in the Shanti Miller Friendship Society, Miller recently accepted the position of international spokesperson for Vela MIcroboard Association. Its no small gig either, since there are now over 300 functioning Vela Microboards in B.C., not to mention exploding numbers in Canada, the United States and Ireland.
When asked how she'll juggle it all, her response comes effortlessly. She's obviously thought about it. "If you're blessed enough to have people ask you to help out, you have to got for it. I'm at peace because I know my sister can live alone, plan where she wants to go and whom she wants to spend her time with. That freedom is incredibly important. When I get tired I find happiness is my own personal moments whether it's eating a massive pizza, connecting with nature or just focusing on being grateful. It's a challenge sometimes to keep those up, but I do, and then I'm honestly so glad I did."
Visit microboard.org for more information about Vela Microboards.
Styling Credits: Clothing Sima Kumar, Hair Louis Maduro, Red Room, Make up Arrow Tyas
Special Thanks to Philip Chin and Grace Residence LTD.