Samantha MacGillivray is a talented 17-year-old Queensland based actor who is pursuing her dream to become a superstar. With the great passion for acting and performing, Samantha has been taping and auditioning for leading roles around the world. Her latest credit is playing the role of Ava in the US Feature Film A Summer To Remember and Caterina Wedberg on Harrow.

When Samantha was a child, she loved creating dances and performing them for the family with her sister. With the encouragement of her family, Samantha was motivated to start attending youth classes at the local theatre at age 12. “I loved acting from the beginning. After a while, I started weekly acting classes with Kris Keevers at The Warehouse Workshop in the Gold Coast and I’m now with Tom McSweeney.” Samantha filmed her first showreel with Australian actor Levi Miller one year later, and was then signed to Gilchrist Management.

Samantha says she thoroughly enjoyed her role in Harrow, working alongside Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd (Hornblower, UnREAL). “My role in Harrow was of the daughter of a mother who has been viciously and randomly murdered. I had to bring emotion and sadness with strength as I met with Ioan (who played Harrow) to ask about my dead mom, and then later go to the morgue and identify her.” Through performing arts, Samantha enjoys the human elements that enable her to express the different emotions required for the different situations and characters. “I just love delivering real raw emotion to the screen, provoking thought, delivering entertainment and moving people. And being part of the amazingly fun process of making everything look so real and believable, it’s really magical.”

This year is the last year of high school for Samantha, and assignments and exams are keeping her busy. “Fitting acting into my schedule has been harder than usual but I love it so much that it’s worth the crazy late nights! Mum and Dad are also incredibly supportive so it just works!” Although Samantha sometimes has to miss out hanging out with friends, she believes acting is something she wants to do for the rest of my life so everything else takes second place. The call that she had landed the role of Ava in A Summer to Remember is one example of how her life as an actress can not always be planned for. “It was surreal, we only had 10 days between getting the role and flying to Fiji.” She says Fiji was amazing and director Martin Wood was so kind to work with. “He has this incredible, loud, celebratory, signature ‘cut call’ when he is especially happy with a scene! The perfect thing to bond everyone with a giggle and a smile!”

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