Modeling was never anything that was a career choice. I did catalog work in Toronto to make money so that I could go to school.
I was raised in Mimico, a small neighborhood just outside of Toronto, Canada. One of the most culturally diverse cities in the world.
I’m born originally in Toronto, and I have what I call my ‘Fame’ story. I took a Greyhound bus and went to Alvin Ailey and received Dunham, Horton, Graham technique there, but I could never take my eyes off of Balanchine doing ‘Nutcracker’; to me he’s the best who ever did it.
There should be more love in Toronto when it comes to the music and entertainment scenes instead of keeping that Screwface Capital name. There should be more artists eating together, more artists celebrating together and more artists making music together. That’s how I feel.
I make personal appearances around the country. I’m starting a book tour now, and I may be coming to Toronto with the Learning Annex, which I’m doing all through the United States, so that may come up just before Christmas.
Music is the only passion I shamelessly indulge in. However, for recreation I enjoy watching movies. ‘Wizard of Oz’ was the first film I ever saw, followed by the ‘Bond’ movies. I also watch a lot of World cinema through DVDs mostly brought by one of my best friends who’s now based in Toronto.
I’ve been to two festivals in my life, and I’ve never been to Toronto. I haven’t really been making festival movies. This is new territory for me.
I was the oldest model in South Africa – I grew up in South Africa, but I was born in Canada – and then when I moved back to Canada, to Toronto, at 42, I was a grandmother doing front covers. I was the oldest model in Canada.
In the summer, I love to go up north to a cottage and relax by the lake, swim, go canoeing… I also love riding my bike around Toronto, going to the farmer’s market, cooking. That sounds simple, but it’s a luxury you don’t have when you’re living in hotels.
I have very happy memories of fairy tales. My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales. And she was an actress, so she used to act out for me the different characters in all these fairy tales.
Toronto is a special city, and the environment is perfect for the arts; free and alive. I’m a New Yorker, and Toronto reminds me of a much cleaner New York, so it’s like coming home after your mom just cleaned your room for you; for me that’s a lovely environment.
I’ve always been in love with that Delta-flavored music… the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.
I’m not trying to bring New York to Toronto. I want to understand Toronto better.
When I first got to Toronto, we were last in defense, 20-something in offense, we were the laughing stock in the Eastern Conference.
I’ve been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don’t know how good we’re going to be received in America because that’s where it’s most challenging.
Toronto is obviously Drake city.
When ‘Brain on Fire’ premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2016, I fixated on inconsequential things like what dress I would wear and how much weight I wanted to lose. I lost my perspective.
Everywhere I go, every city, they’re always like, ‘What’s in the water in Canada? What’s in the water in Toronto?’
I call New York just a bigger version of Toronto.
Even though I’m very fortunate and grateful to have played Aladdin, there were still four, five casting directors who never gave me a shot in Toronto. They didn’t give me the time of day. I never got to audition for them.
I don’t have a problem with anybody in Toronto.
I think I would say ‘The King’s Speech’ is surprisingly funny, in fact the audiences in London, Toronto, LA, New York commented there’s more laughter in this film than in most comedies, while it is also a moving tear-jerker with an uplifting ending.
Charlotte is a very interesting place – I’m Canadian, but I’ve lived in Toronto, Vancouver, and I’ve been living here in L.A. for years.
Say ‘Toronto’ or ‘Ontario,’ and the immediate thought associations are with a somewhat blander version of North America: a United States with a welfare regime and a more polite street etiquette, and the additionally reassuring visage of Queen Elizabeth on the currency.
I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.
I’d love to shoot something in Toronto; I’d love to bring something to Canada. I’m dying to shoot something in Vancouver where I’m from.
I was taking piano lessons with a very good piano instructor in Toronto, and I’m afraid due to my schedule and discipline, it kind of fell apart. One thing lead to another and I was unable to practice as much as I wanted to.
I was in Toronto with my parents, and my dad took me to an outdoor hockey rink. I was 3 or 4, and I just remember everything about that day. For some reason, I thought, ‘This is it. This is what I’m supposed to do.’ And this is around the time that Gretzky came to L.A., so I immediately joined a hockey league.
I think professionally I admire people and the way they’ve handled their careers and being in the media. But the people that I used to inspire me and keep me going were my peers in Toronto – I would see the same girls going to audition after audition, and their resilience to do it again, and I found that inspiring.
Toronto is not a paler version of New York as I might have supposed. It possesses a style of its own: genteel, sometimes hippylike, rustic, peace-loving, pioneering, generous.
I love it here. I really do. Toronto is home for me.
When 1.2 million people come together for Pride in Toronto, that’s great, but we now need to start paying it forward and thinking about the rest of the world.
Toronto is my favourite city in the world.
I have a dear friend here in Toronto, Sarah Millman, who has helped me a lot as a stylist.
I’m an east coaster, you know, I’m brought up in Toronto where it’s very much, like, kind of a miniature New York in that there’s a subway and you’re surrounded by people a lot and, you know, you bump into people and you have interactions and you communicate and la la la.
I enjoy being in Toronto – there’s lots of energy, lots of neat different neighbourhoods – but Vancouver is still home and always will be. I miss going for walks on the ocean with beautiful mountains.
I did ‘Degrassi’ for five years in Toronto, and I made the decision to quit the show to go to theatre school, which a lot of people thought I was really crazy to do, but it was one of those major decisions in my life that I haven’t regretted – hopefully I won’t! I really wanted to go to school.
I’d like to get back home to Nova Scotia more, but thankfully, with technology you can call and text and FaceTime. But physically being in Toronto or Nova Scotia… there’s nothing like it.
I played the drums, and I was in a band called Funkasaurus Rex in Toronto. When I left for school, it became hard to play as frequently.
Toronto girls are super interested in skincare, which is actually kind of unique. Because in New York, the girls seem to be mostly interested in makeup.
Right now a lot of people are still choosing to go to Toronto instead of shooting in New York City, something I haven’t done and something I hope I’ll never have to do.
I’m from Toronto, so I listen to a lot of Toronto artists.
When I left Toronto and entered journalism in the late 1990s, I had many notions about the news business, nearly all of them wrong, as it turned out.
We immigrated when I was 3 1/2 years old, to Toronto. But I’m still very, very close to my culture and – back home in Egypt.
I live in the middle of nowhere. I’m a country bumpkin in Ireland, in Donegal, and to go from that to Toronto, huge city, massive buildings just stretching so tall.
A lot of the original people on ‘SNL’ came through Chicago – and Toronto, I’m sure – but Chicago was the center of it all. When I was there, Chris Farley – I knew him; we hung out and stuff – he went off to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ it was like, ‘It’s possible to be from here and make it.’
When I was 12, I played the Artful Dodger in Cameron McKintosh’s production of ‘Oliver!’ when it came to Toronto. Just getting the role shocked my whole family, and I don’t think I realized until then just how much I loved getting up in front of people and performing.
A lot of people don’t know this, but Toronto is probably the most multicultural city in North America.
Toronto is a very multicultural city, a place of immigrants, like my parents.
I know this is my hometown of Toronto, but I’m going to treat ‘TakeOver: Toronto’ like it’s another night at the office. I’m going to prove why I am one of the best in the world.
I remember going over proofs of this book – my first book – back in 2001, in a bar in Toronto called the ‘Victory Cafe’, and thinking sadly to myself, ‘This is a very good manuscript but not a very good book.’ I don’t know what I meant by that, but I was pretty heartbroken and sure it was true.
Of course Toronto might as well be Buffalo, because we get each other’s TV.
You know what, I’d done an interview show when I was like 16 or 17. One of my first jobs. I did interviews for this television show in Toronto.
