She's Da Bomb

Move over Parker Posey. Sarah Polley -- ''Go,'' ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' and the just-opened ''Guinevere'' -- is the new Indie Queen. Sure, it's partly because of her taste for complex scripts. But the 20-year-old actress says she was first scared off big budget films 12 years ago, while starring in Terry Gilliam's chaotic ''Adventures of Baron Munchausen.''

One day Polley was shooting a scene in a rowboat with a horse aboard. On cue, the animal leaped into the water and kicked up an explosive from the bottom of the pool. ''Terry kept saying to me, 'Lean over the edge a bit more, a bit more,' and then the explosive surfaced and went off in my face,'' she remembers. ''I had to go to the hospital because I lost my hearing for two days.''

But that wasn't the end of it. ''There were explosives all the time, every single day, and even when a car door slams today I'll have a bit of a shellshock reaction,'' says the Toronto native, who in ''Guinevere'' plays an insecure college grad having an affair with a much older photographer. ''I vowed at age 8 never to do another movie with special effects in it.'' Guess you'll have to find another leading lady, Jean Claude.

You Might Also Like

• Video Review Guinevere | William Stevenson
• Movie Review Guinevere (Dec 31, 1999) | Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Movie Review Guinevere (Dec 31, 1999) | Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Hot Topic EW names the movies you shouldn't miss (Dec 31, 1999) | Rebecca Ascher-Walsh
• Movie Review This is My Father (1999) | Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Movie Review The Secret Life of Words (Dec 14, 2002) | Gregory Kirschling