Wit & Attitude Quote by Sarah Polley

Polley’s enthusiasm reads like a small rebellion against the way actresses are often expected to talk about their work: tastefully, thoughtfully, with a careful halo of seriousness. Instead, she leans into pure genre pleasure. “Intense experience, an intense ride” is the language of adrenaline, not prestige. It’s a deliberate framing that validates blockbuster-scale catharsis as a legitimate creative appetite, not a guilty snack between “important” roles.

The cheeky specificity of “run crazy and blow at monsters” does two things at once. It punctures the self-importance that can cling to film discourse, and it foregrounds the bodily reality of action filmmaking. Zombie movies are usually treated as either schlock or allegory; Polley plants her flag in the sweat-and-sprint version. That’s the subtext: intensity isn’t only emotional or intellectual. It can be kinetic, messy, even a little ridiculous, and still meaningful.

“It was a physical shoot and I enjoyed it” lands as a quiet corrective to assumptions about who gets to relish physicality on set. Action has historically been coded masculine, while women’s performances are too often reduced to close-ups and feelings. Polley’s pleasure in the “physical” stakes a claim for agency: she’s not merely being put through stunts; she’s choosing the strain, the pace, the chaos.

Context matters, too. Coming up in an era when “serious” actors frequently had to justify genre work, Polley flips the script. No apology, no wink at “lowbrow” tastes. Just a clear-eyed statement that sometimes the point is the ride, and that can be its own form of artistry.