Werewolves have nothing on Al Pacino. At least that’s what actress Katharine Isabelle tells me about meeting the intimidating movie star.

“I was terrified when I got the part,” admits Isabelle about having to work with Pacino in Memento director Christopher Nolan’s remake of Insomnia. “I had heard all these things about him, like if you look at him in the eye you’re going to get fired, or you can’t talk to him unless you’re spoken to, but it wasn’t true.”

Isabelle, whose role as a teenager-turned-werewolf in John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps has garnered accolades nation-wide, remembers vividly her first early morning scene with the superstar.

“I was puking my guts because I got food poisoning the night before,” she laughs down the line from her home in Vancouver. “I was puking my guts out in my trailer 20 minutes before I was supposed to do the scene with Al Pacino! So in our very first scene he’s screaming at me, SCREAMING at me! That was pretty harrowing.”

No kidding. Insomnia is set in a small Alaskan town where a veteran police officer (Pacino) is sent to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. The cop is forced into a game of psychological cat-and-mouse by a primary suspect (Robin Williams) after his partner is killed. The stakes escalate as he contends with an idealistic detective (Hilary Swank) and finds his own stability dangerously threatened.

Isabelle, who plays the town whore and the murder victim’s best friend, was grateful that the pic was filmed not far from her home in Moncton, British Columbia, but admitted that the “stars” weren’t so keen about working in such isolation.

“Pacino was complaining that there wasn’t much to do after the shooting was over,” explains the 20-year-old actress. “During one of our scenes, we were sitting in a car for like hours as we were being pulled along in Squamish, and we began talking about poker. I told him that I learned when I was kid how to play poker. So he says that to beat the boredom he’s going to organize a poker game.”

A week later Isabelle gets the call inviting her to attend an exclusive poker party at Pacino’s penthouse suite at the Four Seasons hotel. “Of course I suck at poker and I’m freaking out because I don’t know how to play, so I go out and get a poker book and I practice.”

Convinced that she’s just one of a dozen folks invited to the event and won’t necessarily be forced to sit in, Isabelle arrived at the penthouse fairly tranquil. “Boy, was I wrong,” she giggles. “I get there and there’s Al Pacino, myself and five producers. And that’s it. Omigod! We ended playing poker all night, and the only person walking away with any money was Al Pacino.”

The daughter of two-time Emmy Award-winning production designer Graham Murray (The X-Files) and writer/producer Gail Murray, Isabelle has been involved in the movie business since she can remember, so a career in acting was no surprise. “Much to my parents’ protests,” she says. “They didn’t want me to get into the business but I insisted. I remember hearing about this audition and I just begged and begged my mother to let me try out.”

The role, which she of course got, was in Joel Schumacher’s Cousins starring Ted Danson and Isabella Rossellini. “I wore frilly little dresses and it was sunny, and I said, ‘Mommy, I want to do this forever.’ And I did.”

And the parts haven’t been minor, either. Some of her more recent leads include Ernest Dickerson’s Bones, David Nutter’s Disturbing Behaviour and David Hansen’s Shot in the Face.

So after a lifetime of acting, are there any regrets?

“No,” she says. “There is stuff I miss that I wasn’t able to do, like being a kid, having not to change schools constantly because they couldn’t always accommodate my schedule. It was a sacrifice. But I’ve done a zillion things to compensate.”

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