Emily Schooley

Written by Daniel Stad

With visions of fearless women in trousers while smoking cigars, Emily left Port Colborne at the age of 17 to pursue her dreams of acting. From taking the lead role in Aesop’s Fables at the age of 7 to her grand cast of my little ponies on her backyard stage of cement blocks, acting was and always will be in Emily’s blood.

In acting, Emily’s favorite roles are usually character roles, such as awkward nerds, emotional poets, neurotic wives or roles where she can have a chance to study a whole new profession and get a little “method.” Her most desired roles are those really dark and twisted ones, especially ones that take her to dark places mentally. To quote her; “I love working in horror because I love roles where I can scream, get bloody, and/or be the sadistic killer, and make the audience very uncomfortable. I've been told I have somewhat of a reputation as a scream queen, so I guess you could say playing the Final Girl too. On the flip side, I refuse to play any role where "hot" is my primary trait - I need to play characters with some sort of substance, unless the project is meant to be satire.”

After digging Emily’s brain a bit, I get that she is a very down to earth person and doesn’t take part in the superficial madness of the acting and modeling world. She recognizes that she’s a bit too nice; maybe helps people out a bit too much and works hard at being very approachable. When I asked her what separates her from other actresses, she said “I'm too real for Hollywood. I'm not afraid to talk about my controversial opinions/life experiences and I'm not afraid of people who don't like me. I'd rather just work with someone who makes intelligent, well-executed Indie films than work on some project without message or meaning just for a paycheque.”

Even though Emily doesn’t consider herself a model, she does occasionally model when she’s bored or to help out friends who might be pursuing photography, but it’s not her true calling. I did ask her anyways what her favorite body part was and she said it was her hair, saying “I love my hair, because that's what contains my super-power: I can match any hair color with my skin tone. I've been blonde, black, green, pink, purple, and blue aside from red, and they've all looked awesome on me.” She also points out that the recent trend in having a more healthy body type in modeling & fashion makes her happy and hopeful.

I didn’t think I was going to get an answer to my question about Emily having favorite designer, but she did! She said “I'm secretly a bit obsessed with and would love to have a closet of Vivienne Westwood. A whole walk-in closet, maybe two. My own clothing style is usually a little bit punk-rock mixed with vintage, and I prefer to not have to wear pants whenever possible.”

When it comes to staying in shape and keep fit, Emily had this to say “Weight is far less important to me than how I feel overall. I'm pretty obsessed with hot yoga right now, though I go for the stress relief and relaxation benefits more than anything. I'm also a proud member of a pillow fighting organization here in Toronto called Bedlam, and we practice twice a week. I am a little unhappy with my body right now only because I've been eating badly and have put on stress weight - I've had to deal with an abusive ex-boyfriend through an ongoing court processes, and it's just not a good situation over all.”
I was very surprised to learn that Emily’s childhood dream was to be a veterinarian. She didn’t pursue this dream however because she couldn’t handle the calculus and ended up going into acting almost on a whim. She was doing a play at the end of high school and had to go to a high school the next town over for math. Funny enough she stuck to the play and dropped the math class, but she was so proud of the 12% she got for the two weeks of class that she actually attended.

If Emily could change one thing about herself she would get laser eye surgery, its something she’s been thinking about doing for a long time, that and she would learn how to be less hard on herself. If Emily could change the world though, she would eliminate the class system. It makes her so angry that there are people living in homes worth millions of dollars while wasting so much when there are people who can’t afford to eat and don’t have basic shelter or health care.

Over the next five years Emily sees herself getting married to her drummer fiancé, sometime in June 2013, but she also sees herself owning a house with a proper swimming pool in the basement and a big porch swing out front. She also plans to be a co-star on a hugely popular dramatic series, something like Gillian Anderson on the X-Files.