Lucinda Armstrong Hall in ‘Porcupine Lake.’
At the tender age of 15, actress Lucinda Armstrong Hall has amassed a C.V. which many of her older peers would envy.
She made her stage debut in 2011 playing one of the orphans in John Frost’s production of the musical Annie at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre.
The following year she made her first appearance in Neighbours as Holly Hoyland, a recurring role which continues.
She has also performed in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at Melbourne’s Her Majesty’s Theatre and in director Wayne Hope’s feature comedy Now Add Honey.
In 2016 she scored her first role in an international film, Canadian director Ingrid Veninger’s coming-of-age drama Porcupine Lake, which premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival to glowing reviews.
Now she has been nominated for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in the Canadian Screen Awards which will be held in Toronto on March 11.
She plays Kate, a brash, uninhibited 13-year-old growing up in a chaotic family in small town Northern Ontario. The plot follows her relationship with teenager Bea (Charlotte Salisbury), who desperately wants to escape from her mundane, isolated life.
The Toronto Globe and Mail’s Marsha Lederman enthused, “Remarkable performances by the two young actors at the centre of the film – along with assured, subtle storytelling by director/screenwriter Ingrid Veninger – propel this cottage country coming-of-age drama.”
Armstrong Hall met Veninger in 2016 when the director brought her film He Hated Pigeons to Australia, where it screened at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival in March.
Lucinda’s mother Sally, who grew up in Canada, is a childhood friend of Veninger. Sally took her daughter to the screening and afterwards the director was struck by Lucinda’s probing questions about the movie and the performances.
Veninger asked her to audition, which she filmed on her iPhone and a few months later offered her the role of Kate, whom she describes as a mean girl who pushes people away from her. She relished the six week shoot in remote Northern Ontario as the cast and crew lived in cabins and shared every meal together. They had canoes and campfires instead of phones and television.
Lucinda, who is represented by RGM Artists, tells IF she had wanted to act since she was seven but her mother insisted she wait until she turned nine. A student at a grammar school in Melbourne, she has tutors on sets.
She is sworn to secrecy on the storyline of the next series of Neighbours except to say she enjoyed working for the first time with Natalie Bassingthwaighte, who returns to the soap as Holly’s mother.
She hopes Porcupine Lake will screen at Australian festivals this year.